Eccentricity (mathematics)
Characteristic of conic sections / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For the eccentricity of a vertex in a graph, see Eccentricity (graph theory).
In mathematics, the eccentricity of a conic section is a non-negative real number that uniquely characterizes its shape.
One can think of the eccentricity as a measure of how much a conic section deviates from being circular. In particular:
- The eccentricity of a circle is 0.
- The eccentricity of an ellipse which is not a circle is between 0 and 1.
- The eccentricity of a parabola is 1.
- The eccentricity of a hyperbola is greater than 1.
- The eccentricity of a pair of lines is
Two conic sections with the same eccentricity are similar.