Abscissa Dictionary Definitions

It is known as abscissa (word derived from the Latin abscissa, “cut”) to a coordinate of horizontal direction that appears in a rectangular Cartesian plane and that is expressed as the distance that exists between a point and the vertical axis. The so-called abscissa axis represents the horizontal coordinate axis.

This term that concerns us and many others, as would be the case of equations or axes, are all fundamental and key concepts in what is called analytic geometry. This is a scientific area that is responsible for carrying out what is the study of various geometric figures through the use of a series of techniques, algebra and mathematical analysis, in what is a coordinate system.

This area must be underlined that it has its origin in Cartesian geometry, the movement that René Descartes would develop in the period between the 17th and 18th centuries. However, we cannot ignore the fact that, in one way or another, it also “drinks from the waters” of differential geometry, developed by the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, and of algebraic geometry.

This last author has gone down in the history of Mathematics for various questions and among them it should be highlighted, without a doubt, by the fact that he was the first scientist to carry out what is the proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra. In the same way, we must not overlook the structure that it gave to the Theory of Numbers and the large number of publications that it made, among which Disquisitiones arithmeticae stands out.

In the year 1801 it was when this mentioned work was published, which is written in Latin, where it enters fully into what is the fundamental theorem of algebra.

The reference system in relation to an axis (a line), two (a plane) or three axes (in space) that are perpendicular to each other and coincide at a certain point that is identified with the coordinate origin name, it is known as Cartesian coordinates.

On a plane, the Cartesian coordinate X is called the abscissa, while the Cartesian coordinate Y is distinguished by the expression “ordinate. ”

Experts in the field say that the Cartesian system has been baptized in honor of the philosopher, scientist and mathematician René Descartes (1596 – 1650), who sought to support his philosophical reasoning from a starting point on which to build all knowledge. Descartes, as many of you will know, is often regarded as the father of analytic geometry.

In the framework of a linear coordinate system, any point that is part of a certain line can be linked and symbolized by means of a real number (which will be positive if it is a point located to the right of O or negative if it is in the left portion). The coordinate center O corresponds to the value 0.

A flat coordinate system, meanwhile, is made up of two perpendicular lines that intersect at their origin. Each of the points on the plane can be represented by numbers.

Finally, a spatial coordinate system nucleates three lines that are perpendicular to each other (called X, Y and Z), which are at an origin point (0) and whose points in space can be represented by three numbers..

Abscissa