at the location of this high multiplicity. By convention, any such situation indicates a simple discontinuity between the two adjacent polynomial pieces. This means that if a knot "t""i" appears more than "n" + 1 times in an extended knot vector, all instances of it in excess of the ("n" + 1)th can be removed without changing the character of the spline, since all multiplicities "n" + 1, "n" + 2, "n" + 3, etc. have the same meaning. It is commonly assumed that any knot vector defining any type of spline has been culled in this fashion.