The two-coordinate description of the plane was later generalized into the concept of vector spaces. The development of the Cartesian coordinate system would play a fundamental role in the development of the calculus by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. These commentators introduced several concepts while trying to clarify the ideas contained in Descartes's work. The concept of using a pair of axes was introduced later, after Descartes' La Géométrie was translated into Latin in 1649 by Frans van Schooten and his students. īoth Descartes and Fermat used a single axis in their treatments and have a variable length measured in reference to this axis. The French cleric Nicole Oresme used constructions similar to Cartesian coordinates well before the time of Descartes and Fermat. It was independently discovered by Pierre de Fermat, who also worked in three dimensions, although Fermat did not publish the discovery. The adjective Cartesian refers to the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, who published this idea in 1637 while he was resident in the Netherlands. They are the most common coordinate system used in computer graphics, computer-aided geometric design and other geometry-related data processing. Cartesian coordinates are also essential tools for most applied disciplines that deal with geometry, including astronomy, physics, engineering and many more. A familiar example is the concept of the graph of a function.

For example, a circle of radius 2, centered at the origin of the plane, may be described as the set of all points whose coordinates x and y satisfy the equation x 2 + y 2 = 4 the area, the perimeter and the tangent line at any point can be computed from this equation by using integrals and derivatives, in a way that can be applied to any curve.Ĭartesian coordinates are the foundation of analytic geometry, and provide enlightening geometric interpretations for many other branches of mathematics, such as linear algebra, complex analysis, differential geometry, multivariate calculus, group theory and more. Using the Cartesian coordinate system, geometric shapes (such as curves) can be described by equations involving the coordinates of points of the shape. The equation of a circle is ( x − a) 2 + ( y − b) 2 = r 2 where a and b are the coordinates of the center ( a, b) and r is the radius.Ĭartesian coordinates are named for René Descartes, whose invention of them in the 17th century revolutionized mathematics by allowing the expression of problems of geometry in terms of algebra and calculus. These coordinates are the signed distances from the point to n mutually perpendicular fixed hyperplanes.Ĭartesian coordinate system with a circle of radius 2 centered at the origin marked in red. More generally, n Cartesian coordinates specify the point in an n-dimensional Euclidean space for any dimension n. Similarly, the position of any point in three-dimensional space can be specified by three Cartesian coordinates, which are the signed distances from the point to three mutually perpendicular planes. The point where they meet is called the origin and has (0, 0) as coordinates. In geometry, a Cartesian coordinate system ( UK: / k ɑːr ˈ t iː zj ə n/, US: / k ɑːr ˈ t i ʒ ə n/) in a plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point uniquely by a pair of real numbers called coordinates, which are the signed distances to the point from two fixed perpendicular oriented lines, called coordinate lines, coordinate axes or just axes (plural of axis) of the system. Four points are marked and labeled with their coordinates: (2, 3) in green, (−3, 1) in red, (−1.5, −2.5) in blue, and the origin (0, 0) in purple.

Illustration of a Cartesian coordinate plane.

Coordinate graph pictures