Proportionally cutting circles are circles that intersect the sidelines of a reference triangle such that length of the chords that are cut off have
lengths
,
,
and
that are proportional to the corresponding side lengths
,
, and
of
.
The circumcircle and Stammler circles are proportionally-cutting circles. Let be the
vertex of the anticevian
triangle of the circumcenter
, then the circle with center
passing through
is a proportionally cutting circle, and similarly for
and
.
The centers of proportionally-cutting circles lie on the Stammler hyperbola.
Depending on , there may be 2, 3 or 4 proportionally-cutting circles (Stammler
1992). If
is a value giving four proportionally-cutting circles, then
the centers of these circles form an orthocentric
system of which the circumcircle is the nine-point
circle (Ehrmann and van Lamoen 2002).