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Noun: critical point  kri-ti-kul poynt
  1. A crisis situation or point in time when a critical decision must be made
    "he must be made to realize that the company stands at a critical point";
    - juncture, crossroads, climacteric
     
  2. (mathematics) a point at which a function has zero, infinite or undefined derivative (in more than one dimension a point where the rank of the Jacobian matrix is not maximal)
    "The optimization problem involved finding the critical points of the function"

Derived forms: critical points

Type of: crisis

Encyclopedia: Critical point