In mathematics, the rational normal curve is a smooth, rational curve of degree n in projective n-space It is a simple example of a projective variety; formally, it is the Veronese variety when the domain is the projective line. For n=2 it is the flat conic and for n=3 it is the twisted cubic. The term "normal" is an old term meaning that the linear system defining the embedding is complete (and has nothing to do with normal schemes). The intersection of the rational normal curve with an affine space is called the moment curve.
Read more about Rational Normal Curve: Definition, Alternate Parameterization, Properties
Famous quotes containing the words rational, normal and/or curve:
“After I went to bed I had a curious fancy as to dreams. In sleep the doors of the mind are shut, and thoughts come jumping in at the windows. They tumble headlong, and therefore are so disorderly and strange. Sometimes they are stout and light on their feet, and then they are rational dreams.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“The obese is ... in a total delirium. For he is not only large, of a size opposed to normal morphology: he is larger than large. He no longer makes sense in some distinctive opposition, but in his excess, his redundancy.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty.... Here was every sensuous curve of the “human figure divine” but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.”
—Edward Weston (1886–1958)