Degree
When using the term "quadratic polynomial", authors sometimes mean "having degree exactly 2", and sometimes "having degree at most 2". If the degree is less than 2, this may be called a "degenerate case". Usually the context will establish which of the two is meant.
Sometimes the word "order" is used with the meaning of "degree", e.g. a second-order polynomial.
Read more about this topic: Quadratic Polynomial
Famous quotes containing the word degree:
“Maybe men are separated from each other only by the degree of their misery.”
—Francis Picabia (1878–1953)
“In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself—only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“[F]or as Socrates says that a wise man is a citizen of the world, so I thought that a wise woman was equally at liberty to range through every station or degree of men, to fix her choice wherever she pleased.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)