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Geometrically, the discriminant of a quadratic form in three variables is the equation of a quadratic projective curve. The discriminant is zero if and only if the curve is decomposed in lines (possibly over an algebraically closed extension of the field). A quadratic form in four variables is the equation of a projective surface.
For quadratic equations with rational coefficients, if the discriminant is a square number, then the roots are rational—in other cases they may be quadratic irrationals. If the discriminant is zero, then there is exactly one real root − b 2 a , {\displaystyle -{\frac {b}{2a}},} sometimes called a repeated or double root or two equal roots.
The quadratic formula is exactly correct when performed using the idealized arithmetic of real numbers, but when approximate arithmetic is used instead, for example pen-and-paper arithmetic carried out to a fixed number of decimal places or the floating-point binary arithmetic available on computers, the limitations of the number representation ...
The discriminant of a quadratic form, concretely the class of the determinant of a representing matrix in K / (K ×) 2 (up to non-zero squares) can also be defined, and for a real quadratic form is a cruder invariant than signature, taking values of only "positive, zero, or negative".
If a quadratic function is equated with zero, then the result is a quadratic equation. The solutions of a quadratic equation are the zeros (or roots) of the corresponding quadratic function, of which there can be two, one, or zero. The solutions are described by the quadratic formula. A quadratic polynomial or quadratic function can involve ...
Pierre Fermat stated that if p is an odd prime then the equation = + has a solution iff (), and he made similar statement about the equations = +, = +, = and =. x 2 + y 2 , x 2 + 2 y 2 , x 2 − 3 y 2 {\displaystyle x^{2}+y^{2},x^{2}+2y^{2},x^{2}-3y^{2}} and so on are quadratic forms, and the theory of quadratic forms gives a unified way of ...
In Galois theory, a discipline within the field of abstract algebra, a resolvent for a permutation group G is a polynomial whose coefficients depend polynomially on the coefficients of a given polynomial p and has, roughly speaking, a rational root if and only if the Galois group of p is included in G.
In mathematics, a definite quadratic form is a quadratic form over some real vector space V that has the same sign (always positive or always negative) for every non-zero vector of V. According to that sign, the quadratic form is called positive-definite or negative-definite .