The term horse saddle is used, in contrast to monkey saddle, to designate a saddle point that is a minimax, that is to say a local minimum or maximum depending on the intersecting plane used. The monkey saddle has just a point of inflection. To see this, consider a line y = kx. Along this direction the surface becomes simply z = (1 − 3k2)x3, lacking any critical points.
Read more about this topic: Monkey Saddle
Famous quotes containing the words horse and/or saddle:
“I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As the saddle makes the horse, so the tailor makes the man.”
—Chinese proverb.