16 Feb
2007
16 Feb
'07
10:54 p.m.
But this reminds me of something that used to bother me in high school when I learned about conic sections: Was anyone else annoyed that a line segment (which can be defined as the set of all points X such that |AX| + |BX| = |AB| and hence seems to be a sort of ellipse under one common definition) is not in fact a conic section?
Isn't this definition of a line segment just an ellipse whose minor axis is zero?