plotting a bivariate quadratic curve
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Yackov Lubarsky <ylubarsk at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi, I would like to plot a x,y curve described by the equation : Ax^2 + Bx + Cy^2 + Dy + E == 0 (A,B,C,D,E are constants) This sounds like quite the common task but haven't been able to figure out how to do this. Could you please help ? I am new to R so probably missing something basic.
What you may be missing was all figured out by the ancient Greeks and they didnt even have R in their alphabet! You've got this: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/QuadraticCurve.html but with b=0. I'm not sure how many of the awkward cases (line pairs, imaginary everything) disappear with b=0, but you can compute the Delta, I, J, and K determinants to figure it out. Then set theta to seq(0,2*pi,len=100) and compute r from the polar equation form. Plot r*cos(theta), r*sin(theta)... Confession: its been a long time since I did maths like this (forgive me father, for I have not sin'd). Barry