Cusp (singularity)In mathematics, a cusp, sometimes called spinode in old texts, is a point on a curve where a moving point must reverse direction. A typical example is given in the figure. A cusp is thus a type of singular point of a curve. For a plane curve defined by an analytic, parametric equation a cusp is a point where both derivatives of f and g are zero, and the directional derivative, in the direction of the tangent, changes sign (the direction of the tangent is the direction of the slope ).
Differential topologyIn mathematics, differential topology is the field dealing with the topological properties and smooth properties of smooth manifolds. In this sense differential topology is distinct from the closely related field of differential geometry, which concerns the geometric properties of smooth manifolds, including notions of size, distance, and rigid shape. By comparison differential topology is concerned with coarser properties, such as the number of holes in a manifold, its homotopy type, or the structure of its diffeomorphism group.
Singular value decompositionIn linear algebra, the singular value decomposition (SVD) is a factorization of a real or complex matrix. It generalizes the eigendecomposition of a square normal matrix with an orthonormal eigenbasis to any matrix. It is related to the polar decomposition. Specifically, the singular value decomposition of an complex matrix M is a factorization of the form where U is an complex unitary matrix, is an rectangular diagonal matrix with non-negative real numbers on the diagonal, V is an complex unitary matrix, and is the conjugate transpose of V.