Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a geometer. Until the 19th century, geometry was almost exclusively devoted to Euclidean geometry, which includes the notions of point, line, plane, distance, angle, surface, and curve, as fundamental concepts.
Symmetry () in everyday language refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, the term has a more precise definition and is usually used to refer to an object that is invariant under some transformations, such as translation, reflection, rotation, or scaling. Although these two meanings of the word can sometimes be told apart, they are intricately related, and hence are discussed together in this article.
A circle is a shape consisting of all points in a plane that are at a given distance from a given point, the centre. The distance between any point of the circle and the centre is called the radius. Usually, the radius is required to be a positive number. A circle with (a single point) is a degenerate case. This article is about circles in Euclidean geometry, and, in particular, the Euclidean plane, except where otherwise noted. Specifically, a circle is a simple closed curve that divides the plane into two regions: an interior and an exterior.
In mathematics, an order topology is a certain topology that can be defined on any totally ordered set. It is a natural generalization of the topology of the real numbers to arbitrary totally ordered sets. If X is a totally ordered set, the order topology on X is generated by the subbase of "open rays" for all a, b in X. Provided X has at least two elements, this is equivalent to saying that the open intervals together with the above rays form a base for the order topology.
In mathematics, general topology (or point set topology) is the branch of topology that deals with the basic set-theoretic definitions and constructions used in topology. It is the foundation of most other branches of topology, including differential topology, geometric topology, and algebraic topology. The fundamental concepts in point-set topology are continuity, compactness, and connectedness: Continuous functions, intuitively, take nearby points to nearby points.
