In mathematics, the lowest common denominator or least common denominator (abbreviated LCD) is the least common multiple of the denominators of a set of vulgar fractions. It is the smallest positive integer that is a multiple of the denominators.
The term is also used in popular culture with a different though related meaning.
Read more about Lowest Common Denominator: Examples, Middle School Instruction, Non-mathematical Usage
Famous quotes containing the words common denominator, lowest and/or common:
“Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–62)
“The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“The classicist, and the naturalist who has much in common with him, refuse to see in the highest works of art anything but the exercise of judgement, sensibility, and skill. The romanticist cannot be satisfied with such a normal standard; for him art is essentially irrational—an experience beyond normality, sometimes destructive of normality, and at the very least evocative of that state of wonder which is the state of mind induced by the immediately inexplicable.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)