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Coordinate System ○꠹｜Definition｜1st｜20251119205401-00-⌔
Coordinate system
In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine and standardize the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space.12 The coordinates are not interchangeable; they are commonly distinguished by their position in an ordered tuple, or by a label, such as in “the x -coordinate”. The coordinates are taken to be real numbers in elementary mathematics, but may be complex numbers or elements of a more abstract system such as a commutative ring. The use of a coordinate system allows problems in geometry to be translated into problems about numbers and vice versa; this is the basis of analytic geometry.3
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