Affine geometryIn mathematics, affine geometry is what remains of Euclidean geometry when ignoring (mathematicians often say "forgetting") the metric notions of distance and angle. As the notion of parallel lines is one of the main properties that is independent of any metric, affine geometry is often considered as the study of parallel lines. Therefore, Playfair's axiom (Given a line L and a point P not on L, there is exactly one line parallel to L that passes through P.) is fundamental in affine geometry.
Projective planeIn mathematics, a projective plane is a geometric structure that extends the concept of a plane. In the ordinary Euclidean plane, two lines typically intersect at a single point, but there are some pairs of lines (namely, parallel lines) that do not intersect. A projective plane can be thought of as an ordinary plane equipped with additional "points at infinity" where parallel lines intersect. Thus any two distinct lines in a projective plane intersect at exactly one point.
Gino FanoGino Fano (5 January 1871 8 November 1952) was an Italian mathematician, best known as the founder of finite geometry. He was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Mantua, in Italy and died in Verona, also in Italy. Fano made various contributions on projective and algebraic geometry. His work in the foundations of geometry predates the similar, but more popular, work of David Hilbert by about a decade. He was the father of physicist Ugo Fano and electrical engineer Robert Fano and uncle to physicist and mathematician Giulio Racah.
Complete quadrangleIn mathematics, specifically in incidence geometry and especially in projective geometry, a complete quadrangle is a system of geometric objects consisting of any four points in a plane, no three of which are on a common line, and of the six lines connecting the six pairs of points. Dually, a complete quadrilateral is a system of four lines, no three of which pass through the same point, and the six points of intersection of these lines.
Projective geometryIn mathematics, projective geometry is the study of geometric properties that are invariant with respect to projective transformations. This means that, compared to elementary Euclidean geometry, projective geometry has a different setting, projective space, and a selective set of basic geometric concepts. The basic intuitions are that projective space has more points than Euclidean space, for a given dimension, and that geometric transformations are permitted that transform the extra points (called "points at infinity") to Euclidean points, and vice-versa.
Möbius planeIn mathematics, the classical Möbius plane (named after August Ferdinand Möbius) is the Euclidean plane supplemented by a single point at infinity. It is also called the inversive plane because it is closed under inversion with respect to any generalized circle, and thus a natural setting for planar inversive geometry. An inversion of the Möbius plane with respect to any circle is an involution which fixes the points on the circle and exchanges the points in the interior and exterior, the center of the circle exchanged with the point at infinity.
Inversive geometryIn geometry, inversive geometry is the study of inversion, a transformation of the Euclidean plane that maps circles or lines to other circles or lines and that preserves the angles between crossing curves. Many difficult problems in geometry become much more tractable when an inversion is applied. Inversion seems to have been discovered by a number of people contemporaneously, including Steiner (1824), Quetelet (1825), Bellavitis (1836), Stubbs and Ingram (1842-3) and Kelvin (1845).
Generalized polygonIn mathematics, a generalized polygon is an incidence structure introduced by Jacques Tits in 1959. Generalized n-gons encompass as special cases projective planes (generalized triangles, n = 3) and generalized quadrangles (n = 4). Many generalized polygons arise from groups of Lie type, but there are also exotic ones that cannot be obtained in this way. Generalized polygons satisfying a technical condition known as the Moufang property have been completely classified by Tits and Weiss.
Incidence matrixIn mathematics, an incidence matrix is a logical matrix that shows the relationship between two classes of objects, usually called an incidence relation. If the first class is X and the second is Y, the matrix has one row for each element of X and one column for each element of Y. The entry in row x and column y is 1 if x and y are related (called incident in this context) and 0 if they are not. There are variations; see below. Incidence matrix is a common graph representation in graph theory.
Desargues configurationIn geometry, the Desargues configuration is a configuration of ten points and ten lines, with three points per line and three lines per point. It is named after Girard Desargues. The Desargues configuration can be constructed in two dimensions from the points and lines occurring in Desargues's theorem, in three dimensions from five planes in general position, or in four dimensions from the 5-cell, the four-dimensional regular simplex. It has a large group of symmetries, taking any point to any other point and any line to any other line.
