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:
“It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“There is always a degree of ridicule that attends a disappointment, though often very unjustly, if the expectation was reasonably grounded; however, it is certainly most prudent not to communicate, prematurely, one’s hopes or one’s fears.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind—the mind of a fighter—in which the virtues of tribal cohesion and fierceness and infantile credulity and malleability are paramount. Thus every new beginning recapitulates in some degree man’s first beginning.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)