Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- multivector
- Part of
- vector space
- Has part
- Euclidean vector
- Image
- Addition af vektorer.png
Show 4 more facts
- described by source
- Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
- Commons category
- Vectors
- different from
- Vektor
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~16 min read
Encyclopedic overview
In mathematics and physics, a vector is a generalization of a single number. It may denote a vector quantity, i.e., physical quantity that cannot be expressed by a single scalar quantity. The term may also be used to refer to elements of vector spaces, that can be added together and multiplied ("scaled") by scalars. In some contexts, vectors are tuples, which are finite sequences (of numbers or other objects) of a fixed length.
Historically, vectors were introduced in geometry and physics (typically in mechanics) for quantities that have both a magnitude and a direction, such as displacements, forces and velocity. Such quantities are represented by geometric vectors in the same way as distances, masses and time are represented by real numbers.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “vector” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.