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Let A : (a,b) → R 2 be a parametric plane curve, in coordinates A(t) = (x(t),y(t)), and B be another (unparameterized) curve. Suppose, as before, that the curve A tends to infinity. The curve B is a curvilinear asymptote of A if the shortest distance from the point A(t) to a point on B tends to zero as t → b.
The equation of a line can be given in vector form: = + Here a is the position of a point on the line, and n is a unit vector in the direction of the line. Then as scalar t varies, x gives the locus of the line. The distance of an arbitrary point p to this line is given by
A simple example of such a problem is to find the curve of shortest length connecting two points. If there are no constraints, the solution is a straight line between the points. However, if the curve is constrained to lie on a surface in space, then the solution is less obvious, and possibly many solutions may exist.
Given the two red points, the blue line is the linear interpolant between the points, and the value y at x may be found by linear interpolation. In mathematics, linear interpolation is a method of curve fitting using linear polynomials to construct new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points.
The length of the curve is given by the formula = | ′ | where | ′ | is the Euclidean norm of the tangent vector ′ to the curve. To justify this formula, define the arc length as limit of the sum of linear segment lengths for a regular partition of [ a , b ] {\displaystyle [a,b]} as the number of segments approaches infinity.
A line will connect any two points, so a first degree polynomial equation is an exact fit through any two points with distinct x coordinates. If the order of the equation is increased to a second degree polynomial, the following results: = + +. This will exactly fit a simple curve to three points.
More precisely, the implicit equation is the resultant with respect to t of xr(t) – p(t) and yr(t) – q(t). In higher dimensions (either more than two coordinates or more than one parameter), the implicitization of rational parametric equations may by done with Gröbner basis computation; see Gröbner basis § Implicitization in higher ...
The asymptotic directions are the same as the asymptotes of the hyperbola of the Dupin indicatrix through a hyperbolic point, or the unique asymptote through a parabolic point. [ 1 ] An asymptotic direction is a direction along which the normal curvature is zero: take the plane spanned by the direction and the surface's normal at that point.