Vector

Origin

New Latin, from Latin, carrier, from vehere to carry

• 1846

Definitions

• 1a : a quantity that has magnitude and direction and that is commonly represented by a directed line segment whose length represents the magnitude and whose orientation in space represents the direction; broadly : an element of a vector space

b : a course or compass direction especially of an airplane

• 2a : an organism (as an insect) that transmits a pathogen

b : pollinator

• 3: an agent (as a plasmid or virus) that contains or carries modified genetic material (as recombinant DNA) and can be used to introduce exogenous genes into the genome of an organism

Description

• Euclidean vector, a geometric entity endowed with magnitude and direction as well as a positive-definite inner product; an element of a Euclidean vector space. In physics, euclidean vectors are used to represent physical quantities that have both magnitude and direction, such as force, in contrast to scalar quantities, which have no direction.
• Vector product, or cross product, an operation on two vectors in a three-dimensional Euclidean space, producing a third three-dimensional Euclidean vector
• Burgers vector, a vector that represents the magnitude and direction of the lattice distortion of dislocation in a crystal lattice
• Laplace–Runge–Lenz vector, a vector used chiefly to describe the shape and orientation of the orbit of one astronomical body around another
• Normal vector, or surface normal, a vector that is perpendicular to a (hyper)surface at a point
• Random vector or multivariate random variable, in statistics, a set of real-valued random variables that may be correlated.[1]

See also

• Vectors in physics Includes an embedded interactive program on vectors.