What is the graph of a quadratic equation called?

1 Answer
Mar 27, 2015

It is called a parabola..

A parabola is a plane figure, determined by
a fixed point (called the focus of the parabola)
and a fixed line (called the directrix of the parabola)

The parabola consists of all pints in the plane whose distance to the focus is equal to its distance to the directrix.
(The distance from a point to a line is the length of the perpendicular.

Here's a picture from the wikibooks link I'll give below:

#F# is the focus, #L# is the directrix, and the points #P_1, P_2, P_3 # are points on the parabola.

enter image source here

Here's a link for more information: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Algebra/Parabola