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
Generalised circle Generalised circle A generalized circle, also referred to as a "cline" or "circline", is a straight line or a circle. The concept is mainly used in inversive geometry, because straight lines and circles have very similar properties in that geometry and are best treated together. Inversive plane geometry is formulated on the plane extended by one point at infinity. A straight line is then thought of as one of the circles that passes through the asymptotic point at infinity. The fundamental transformations in inversive geometry, the "inversions", have the property that they map generalized circles to generalized circles. Möbius transformations,