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In mathematics, a parabola is a plane curve which is mirror-symmetrical and is approximately U-shaped. It fits several superficially different mathematical descriptions, which can all be proved to define exactly the same curves. One description of a parabola involves a point (the focus) and a line (the directrix). The focus does not lie on the ...
While a parabolic arch may resemble a catenary arch, a parabola is a quadratic function while a catenary is the hyperbolic cosine, cosh(x), a sum of two exponential functions. One parabola is f(x) = x 2 + 3x − 1, and hyperbolic cosine is cosh(x) = e x + e −x / 2 . The curves are unrelated.
A conic section, conic or a quadratic curve is a curve obtained from a cone's surface intersecting a plane. The three types of conic section are the hyperbola, the parabola, and the ellipse; the circle is a special case of the ellipse, though it was sometimes called as a fourth type.
In this position, the hyperbolic paraboloid opens downward along the x-axis and upward along the y-axis (that is, the parabola in the plane x = 0 opens upward and the parabola in the plane y = 0 opens downward). Any paraboloid (elliptic or hyperbolic) is a translation surface, as it can be generated by a moving parabola directed by a second ...
In mathematics, a hyperbola is a type of smooth curve lying in a plane, defined by its geometric properties or by equations for which it is the solution set. A hyperbola has two pieces, called connected components or branches, that are mirror images of each other and resemble two infinite bows.
A ballistic trajectory is a parabola with homogeneous acceleration, such as in a space ship with constant acceleration in absence of other forces. On Earth the acceleration changes magnitude with altitude as g ( y ) = g 0 / ( 1 + y / R ) 2 {\textstyle g(y)=g_{0}/(1+y/R)^{2}} and direction (faraway targets) with latitude/longitude along the ...
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In probability and statistics, the parabolic fractal distribution is a type of discrete probability distribution in which the logarithm of the frequency or size of entities in a population is a quadratic polynomial of the logarithm of the rank (with the largest example having rank 1). This can markedly improve the fit over a simple power-law ...