Secant line a circle in the Euclidean plane, a line joining two of them would be a 2-secant (or "bisecant") and a line passing through only one of them would be a 1-secant (or "unisecant"). A unisecant in this example need not be a tangent line to the circle. This terminology is often used in incidence geometry and discrete geometry. For instance, the Sylvester–Gallai theorem of incidence geometry states that if points of Euclidean geometry are not collinear then there must exist a 2-secant of them. And the original orchard-planting problem of discrete geometry asks for a bound on the number of
Incidence (geometry) Incidence (geometry) In geometry, an incidence relation is a heterogeneous relation that captures the idea being expressed when phrases such as "a point "lies on" a line" or "a line is "contained in" a plane" are used. The most basic incidence relation is that between a point, , and a line, , sometimes denoted . If the pair is called a "flag". There are many expressions used in common language to describe incidence (for example, a line "passes through" a point, a point "lies in" a plane, etc.) but the term "incidence" is preferred because it does not have the