Why is ContourPlot not displaying this curve?

I am using the general form of a second-degree plane curve:

$$Ax^2+2Bxy + Cy^2+2Dx + 2Ey + F = 0$$

I want to randomly generate plane curves of this form, so I am using RandomReal[{-1,1},6] to
generate the coefficients. I made the above equation into a function:

SecondDegreeCurve[{a_, b_, c_, d_, e_, f_}, x_, y_] :=
a x^2 + 2 b x y + c y^2 + 2 d x + 2 e y + f == 0


However, when I try to plug the composition

ContourPlot[
SecondDegreeCurve[RandomReal[{5}, 6], x, y],
{x, -2, 2}, {y, -2, 2}]


into ContourPlot, the image comes back blank.

When I run SecondDegreeCurve[RandomReal[{5}, 6], x, y], I get something like the following output:

1.4557 + 5.20582 x + 1.29609 x^2 + 9.37565 y + 6.73248 x y + 1.84528 y^2 == 0


and when I plug this into ContourPlot, the curve is displayed.

My question is, what is it about the initial composed expression that doesn't display the curve?

-

This has to do with the HoldAll attribute of ContourPlot. Try it with Evaluate inserted, like this:

ContourPlot[
SecondDegreeCurve[RandomReal[{5}, 6], x, y] // Evaluate,
{x, -2, 2}, {y, -2, 2}
]


you get ouput like this:

or

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That did the trick! So, since I ran the composed function and got the output, that was the evaluation step that I was missing initially? –  Tobi Lehman Feb 5 '12 at 22:12
Yeah, if you don't use Evaluate your function is evaluated completely anew for every point the ContourPlot tries. That means the RandomReal is executed every time, yielding a hopeless mess of values. With Evaluate the RandomReal disappears from the resulting function, as only the numerical results remain. –  Sjoerd C. de Vries Feb 5 '12 at 22:16

Use Evaluate, i.e.

ContourPlot[Evaluate @ SecondDegreeCurve[RandomReal[{5}, 6], x, y] == 0,
{x, -2, 2}, {y, -2, 2}]

-
Evaluate works. I prefer Function:
SecondDegreeCurve[{a_, b_, c_, d_, e_, f_}, x_, y_] :=