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A straight line can intersect a circle at zero, one, or two points. A line with intersections at two points is called a secant line, at one point a tangent line and at no points an exterior line. A chord is the line segment that joins two distinct points of a circle. A chord is therefore contained in a unique secant line and each secant line ...
The word secant comes from Latin for "to cut", and a general secant line "cuts" a circle, intersecting it twice; this concept dates to antiquity and can be found in Book 3 of Euclid's Elements, as used e.g. in the intersecting secants theorem. 18th century sources in Latin called any non-tangential line segment external to a circle with one endpoint on the circumference a secans exterior.
Next to the intersecting chords theorem and the tangent-secant theorem, the intersecting secants theorem represents one of the three basic cases of a more general theorem about two intersecting lines and a circle - the power of point theorem.
Equal chords are subtended by equal angles from the center of the circle. A chord that passes through the center of a circle is called a diameter and is the longest chord of that specific circle. If the line extensions (secant lines) of chords AB and CD intersect at a point P, then their lengths satisfy AP·PB = CP·PD (power of a point theorem).
The tangent-secant theorem can be proven using similar triangles (see graphic). Like the intersecting chords theorem and the intersecting secants theorem, the tangent-secant theorem represents one of the three basic cases of a more general theorem about two intersecting lines and a circle, namely, the power of point theorem.
If the angle subtended by the chord at the centre is 90°, then ℓ = r √2, where ℓ is the length of the chord, and r is the radius of the circle. If two secants are inscribed in the circle as shown at right, then the measurement of angle A is equal to one half the difference of the measurements of the enclosed arcs (⌢ and ⌢).
Given a circle whose center is point O, choose three points V, C, D on the circle. Draw lines VC and VD: angle ∠DVC is an inscribed angle. Now draw line OV and extend it past point O so that it intersects the circle at point E. Angle ∠DVC intercepts arc DC on the circle. Suppose this arc includes point E within it.
In numerical analysis, the secant method is a root-finding algorithm that uses a succession of roots of secant lines to better approximate a root of a function f. The secant method can be thought of as a finite-difference approximation of Newton's method , so it is considered a quasi-Newton method .