Descent may refer to:

As a noun

Genealogy and inheritance

* Common descent, concept in evolutionary biology * Kinship, one of the major concepts of cultural anthropology **

Pedigree chart A pedigree chart is a diagram that shows the occurrence and appearance of phenotypes of a particular gene or organism and its ancestors from one generation to the next, most commonly humans, show dogs, and race horses. Definition The word pedigre ...

family tree A family tree, also called a genealogy or a pedigree chart, is a chart representing family relationships in a conventional tree structure. More detailed family trees, used in medicine and social work, are known as genograms. Representations of ...

** Ancestry ** Lineal descendant **

Heritage Heritage may refer to: History and society * A heritage asset is a preexisting thing of value today ** Cultural heritage is created by humans ** Natural heritage is not * Heritage language Biology * Heredity, biological inheritance of physica ...

Royal descent A royal descent is a genealogical line of descent from a past or present monarch. Both geneticists and genealogists have attempted to estimate the percentage of living people with royal descent. From a genetic perspective, the number of un ...

- lineal descent from a monarch *

Phylogenetics In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups ...

** Tree diagram (disambiguation) *

Inheritance Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Officia ...

(law and property)

Mathematics

Infinite descent In mathematics, a proof by infinite descent, also known as Fermat's method of descent, is a particular kind of proof by contradiction used to show that a statement cannot possibly hold for any number, by showing that if the statement were to hold f ...

, a method going back to Fermat to solve Diophantine equations *

Descent (mathematics) In mathematics, the idea of descent extends the intuitive idea of 'gluing' in topology. Since the topologists' glue is the use of equivalence relations on topological spaces, the theory starts with some ideas on identification. Descent of vec ...

, an idea extending the notion of "gluing" in topology *

Hadamard's method of descent In mathematics, the method of descent is the term coined by the French mathematician Jacques Hadamard as a method for solving a partial differential equation in several real or complex variables, by regarding it as the specialisation of an equa ...

, a technique for solving partial differential equations *

Gradient descent In mathematics, gradient descent (also often called steepest descent) is a first-order iterative optimization algorithm for finding a local minimum of a differentiable function. The idea is to take repeated steps in the opposite direction of the ...

, a first-order optimization algorithm going back to Newton * Descents in permutations, a classical permutation statistic in combinatorics

Other uses

Descent (aeronautics) In aeronautics, a descent is any time period during air travel where an aircraft decreases altitude, and is the opposite of an ''ascent'' or '' climb''. Descents are part of normal procedures, but also occur during emergencies, such as rapid or ...

, the decrease of an aircraft in altitude during flight *

Descent (font) A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands ...

, the distance that a typeface descends below the baseline in typography *

Katabasis A katabasis or catabasis ( grc, κατάβασις, from "down" and "go") is a journey to the underworld. Its original sense is usually associated with Greek mythology and Classical mythology more broadly, where the protagonist visits the Gree ...

As a proper name

Film

* ''

The Descent ''The Descent'' is a 2005 British horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall. The film follows six women who enter a cave system and struggle to survive against the humanoid creatures inside. Filming took place in the United Kingdom. Ex ...

'', a 2005 horror film ** ''

The Descent Part 2 ''The Descent Part 2'' is a 2009 British adventure horror film and sequel to the 2005 horror film '' The Descent''. It was directed by Jon Harris from a screenplay by James McCarthy, J Blakeson, and James Watkins. The film was produced by Ch ...

'', the 2009 sequel to the 2005 film * ''Descent'' (2007 film), a thriller film starring Rosario Dawson * ''Descent'' (2017 film), a Nigerian film

Gaming

* ''Descent'' (video game), first in a series from Interplay Entertainment and Parallax Software ** ''

Descent II ''Descent II'' is a 1996 first-person shooter game developed by Parallax Software and first published for DOS by Interplay Productions. For the PlayStation (console), PlayStation, it is known as ''Descent Maximum''. It is the second installme ...

'', sequel to ''Descent'' ** ''

Descent 3 ''Descent 3'' (stylized as ''Descent³'') is a first-person shooter video game developed by Outrage Entertainment and published by Interplay Entertainment. It was originally released for Microsoft Windows in North America on June 17, 1999. ''D ...

'', sequel to ''Descent II'' * '' Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War'', a 1998 space combat simulation computer game * '' Descent: Journeys in the Dark'', a 2005 board game by Fantasy Flight Games * '' Dragon Age: Inquisition – The Descent'', a 2015 downloadable content pack for ''Dragon Age: Inquisition''

Literature

* '' Descent: An Irresistible Tragicomedy of Everyday Life'', a 2004 novel by Sabrina Broadbent * ''The Descent'' (novel), by Jeff Long * ''Descent'' (magazine), a magazine about caving * ''Descent'' (journal), a genealogy journal published by the Society of Australian Genealogists

Music

* ''Descent'', an album by the band This Burning Effigy * "Descent" (song), a song by Fear Factory from ''Obsolete'' * "Descent", a song by Godflesh from ''

Us and Them Us and Them may refer to: *The sociological concept of in-group and out-group *'' Us & Them'', an American television series * ''Us and Them'' (Australian TV series), a 1994 Australian comedy television series * "Us and Them" (song), by Pink Floy ...

'' * "Descent", a song by Knut from ''

Bastardiser ''Bastardiser'' is the first full-length album by Swiss mathcore band Knut Knut (Norwegian and Swedish), Knud ( Danish), or Knútur (Icelandic) is a Scandinavian, German, and Dutch first name, of which the anglicised form is Canute. In Germ ...

'' * "Descent", a song by Neurosis from '' Times of Grace'' * "A Descent", a song by Born of Osiris from '' A Higher Place'' * "The Descent", a song by Polaris from '' The Death of Me''

Television

* "Descent" (''Star Trek: The Next Generation''), a two-part 1993 episode of ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'' * "Descent" (''The Outer Limits''), a 1999 episode of ''The Outer Limits'' * "Descent" (''Stargate SG-1''), a 2002 episode of ''Stargate SG-1'' * "The Descent" (''The Vampire Diaries''), a 2011 episode of ''The Vampire Diaries'' * "Descent", a 2013 episode of '' NCIS: Los Angeles''