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Descartes' rule of signs. In mathematics, Descartes' rule of signs, described by René Descartes in his La Géométrie, counts the roots of a polynomial by examining sign changes in its coefficients. The number of positive real roots is at most the number of sign changes in the sequence of polynomial's coefficients (omitting zero coefficients ...
Cartesian coordinate system with a circle of radius 2 centered at the origin marked in red. The equation of a circle is (x − a)2 + (y − b)2 = r2 where a and b are the coordinates of the center (a, b) and r is the radius. Cartesian coordinates are named for René Descartes, whose invention of them in the 17th century revolutionized ...
Descartes' theorem generalizes to mutually tangent great or small circles in spherical geometry if the curvature of the th circle is defined as = , the geodesic curvature of the circle relative to the sphere, which equals the cotangent of the oriented intrinsic radius.
Imaginary number. 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.
Euclidean distance. In mathematics, the Euclidean distance between two points in Euclidean space is the length of the line segment between them. It can be calculated from the Cartesian coordinates of the points using the Pythagorean theorem, and therefore is occasionally called the Pythagorean distance. These names come from the ancient Greek ...
Descartes' work provided the basis for the calculus developed by Leibniz and Newton, who applied the infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem, thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics. [139] His rule of signs is also a commonly used method to determine the number of positive and negative roots of a polynomial.
t. e. The Latin cogito, ergo sum, usually translated into English as " I think, therefore I am ", [a] is the "first principle" of René Descartes 's philosophy. He originally published it in French as je pense, donc je suis in his 1637 Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed. [1]
Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated (Latin: Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, in qua Dei existentia et animæ immortalitas demonstratur) is a philosophical treatise by René Descartes first published in Latin in 1641. The French translation (by the Duke of Luynes with ...