Ordinate

See also: Ordination_(statistics)

Illustration of a Cartesian coordinate plane. 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.

In mathematics, ordinate refers to that element of an ordered pair which is plotted on the vertical axis of a two-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, as opposed to the abscissa. The ordinate is the second of the two terms (often labeled x and y) which define the location of a point in such a coordinate system.

$(\overbrace{x}^\text{abscissa}, \overbrace{y}^\text{ordinate})$

Examples

• For the point (-7, 3), -7 is called the abscissa and 3, the ordinate.

See also

• Cartesian coordinate conventions
• ordinate on Wiktionary
• Ordered pair
• Abscissa
• Function (mathematics)
• Relation (mathematics)
• Line chart

External links

• Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics (O)

References

This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.