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I have a really quick and dumb question here. I need to describe a distribution. I have difficulty with explaining an unsmooth hill. If you see the picture, after the peak there is a hill but it doesn't go straight down. There is a flat place, but I don't know how to explain this flat place. I thought this can be explained as bump, but it is not accurate to explain as bump.

Thanks for any help!

enter image description here

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  • How accurate do you expect to get? Why do you think a "bump" is not accurate? if you rotated the graph such that the downslope was horizontal and drove your car over it, you'd definitely say there was a bump in the road. perhaps you could say that there is an intermediate ledge on the downslope.
    – Jim
    Commented Jan 16, 2015 at 16:01
  • If it were a little rougher it would be "jagged".
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Jan 16, 2015 at 17:10
  • It's a hill with a hillside hill. ;-)
    – Drew
    Commented Jan 17, 2015 at 2:24
  • It depends on the scale. If the bump is small (say up to a meter) then it could be a ledge. Depending on location, it could be a berm. Please give some indication of size in your diagram.
    – chasly - supports Monica
    Commented Nov 1, 2020 at 11:42

3 Answers 3

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After reaching a peak, the curve goes halfway down only to form a secondary plateau (mentioned in Edwin Ashworth's comment) before it moves down again.

plateau - (noun) "a region of little or no change in a graphic representation" Meriam-Webster

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You could call that flat place a ledge on the slope. One definition of "ledge" is "a flat surface that projects from a wall of rock." In your picture, the flat section certainly projects from the rock face above it.

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I would just call the "bump" a foothill. I always thought that foothills were technically only at the foot of a mountain, but according to that definition, it can be at the "foot of higher hills".

Edit: I thought there was a mathematical term for that specific kind of curve, though I can't remember what it was.

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