The result may say the quadratic factor is statistically significant, but with a value is $10^{−14}$ it is physically insignificant. I am thinking your question is "Why is the quadratic coefficient so small and not equal to 1 from the original definition?" To answer this look at your plot. The x range (from 0 to 1) is small and in that range the function appears linear. (no noticeable curvature). The contribution quadratic (or higher orders) is very small in the range of -1 < x < 1. Since the square of small number is even smaller. ) $.1^2 = 0.01$. See the blue and green lines below. Both lines are nearly equal. [![enter image description here][1]][1] Now for your second model, fitting a quadratic without the linear term. The least squares method is finding the best 2 coefficients to minimize the error and the result is the red curve. Again there are 50 data points in a small x-range where the quadratic effect is insignificant and thus still a pretty good fit. In fact you just fit the intercept (without any independent variable) you will still end up with a decent fit. Hopefully this help cleared up your confusion. Var1 <- seq(1:51) Var2 <- seq(0, 1, 0.02) Var3 <- Var2^2 Test <- data.frame(cbind(Var1, Var2, Var3)) plot(Test$Var2, Test$Var1) linear <- lm(Var1 ~ Var2, Test) summary(linear) abline(linear, col="blue") quad <- lm(Var1 ~ Var2 + Var3, Test) summary(quad) lines(x=Test$Var2, y=predict(quad, Test), col="green") quad_lite <- lm(Var1 ~ Var3, Test) summary(quad_lite) lines(x=Test$Var2, y=predict(quad_lite, Test), col="red") intercept <- lm(Var1 ~ 1, Test) summary(intercept) [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/A6L87.png