Talk:Vector (mathematics and physics)/Archive 1
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| Archive 1 |
Possible Error in Definition
The article currently states, "If n is an integer and K is either the field of the real numbers or the field of the complex number, then K^n is naturally endowed with a structure of vector space, where K^n is the set of the ordered sequences of n elements of K." The case where n = -1 (or any other negative number) doesn't seem to make sense, as you can't select a negative number of elements from K to order and construct K^n. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.16.195.106 (talk) 23:52, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Ambiguous Disambiguation Page
This disambiguation page is confusing. The primary analogate of all these uses of "vector" is the mathematical "Euclidean vector." I'm a physicist who's never heard "vectors" called by a name that makes it sound like they don't exist in non-Euclidean geometries. Whatever the provenance of that name, it will be intuitively obvious to few people what that means, so people will putz around the page looking for the page on "vector" before clicking on a guess. I'm not sure what the solution is, but the current situation (with, e.g., so many links duplicated in the appropriate places in the "Euclidean vector" article) is just silly. JKeck (talk) 13:41, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
- One of these people looking for the definition of vector as used in statistical programs like R. I was also only familiar with vector as used in physics (i.e. atribute with both value and direction) and could not figure out how to relate this to the vector data type in R. Not sure this page helped me at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.3.173.252 (talk) 11:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
- I agree with both of you. This is why I have added the preamble recently. In my opinion, the remaining of the article has to be completely rewritten. About vectors as atributes with both value and direction, this is the intuitive definition of vector bundle. Your remark suggest to add to the preamble something like a vector may be a pair of a point in some space and a direction associated to the point, lying in a vector space which may or not depend on the point. This meaning has been formalized in the notions of vector bundle and vector field. D.Lazard (talk) 08:31, 27 November 2011 (UTC)