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René Descartes ( / deɪˈkɑːrt / day-KART or UK: / ˈdeɪkɑːrt / DAY-kart; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt] ⓘ; Latinized:Renatus Cartesius; [note 3] [11] 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) [12] [13] [14] : 58 was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science.
Descartes' rule of signs. In mathematics, Descartes' rule of signs, first described by René Descartes in his work La Géométrie, is a technique for getting information on the number of positive real roots of a polynomial. It asserts that the number of positive roots is at most the number of sign changes in the sequence of polynomial's ...
e. In mathematics, the logarithm is the inverse function to exponentiation. That means that the logarithm of a number x to the base b is the exponent to which b must be raised to produce x. For example, since 1000 = 103, the logarithm base of 1000 is 3, or log10 (1000) = 3.
In geometry, Descartes' theorem states that for every four kissing, or mutually tangent, circles, the radii of the circles satisfy a certain quadratic equation. By solving this equation, one can construct a fourth circle tangent to three given, mutually tangent circles. The theorem is named after René Descartes, who stated it in 1643.
The folium of Descartes is related to the trisectrix of Maclaurin by affine transformation. To see this, start with the equation. and change variables to find the equation in a coordinate system rotated 45 degrees. This amounts to setting In the plane the equation is. If we stretch the curve in the direction by a factor of this becomes.
An imaginary number is the product of a real number and the imaginary unit i, [note 1] which is defined by its property i2 = −1. [1] [2] The square of an imaginary number bi is −b2. For example, 5i is an imaginary number, and its square is −25. The number zero is considered to be both real and imaginary. [3]
Cartesian doubt is a systematic process of being skeptical about (or doubting) the truth of one's beliefs, which has become a characteristic method in philosophy. [3] : 403 Additionally, Descartes' method has been seen by many as the root of the modern scientific method. This method of doubt was largely popularized in Western philosophy by ...
La Géométrie. The work was the first to propose the idea of uniting algebra and geometry into a single subject [2] and invented an algebraic geometry called analytic geometry, which involves reducing geometry to a form of arithmetic and algebra and translating geometric shapes into algebraic equations. For its time this was ground-breaking.