what is a vector?

Question

what is a vector?

anonymous · Answer

A guy from the movie "airplane".  He as direction AND magnitude..

amistre64 · Answer

look, over there, up in the sky ....

anonymous · Answer

among other things it's an arrow. But since you're asking it here, column matrices are reffered to as vectors in math. Elements of a "vector<' space are vectors as well. Such elements don not necessarily have direction/magnitude but obey the same properties those quantities do.

anonymous · Answer

... im still a bit confused, it's an ARROW!?!?!????

anonymous · Answer

any thing that has direction is like an arrow.. it points in some direction. The length represents how large your quantity is.. long arrows represent large quantities.

amistre64 · Answer

if i tell you to go 3 feet to the east and 4 feet the to the north; the arrow that directs you in a straight line from your starting point to where you end up is a vector; which is comprised of the 2 vectors it took for you to get there to begin with

anonymous · Answer

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:DDDD

amistre64 · Answer

.... in a nutshell

amistre64 · Answer

vectors have a nongeometric / abstract ability as well :)

amistre64 · Answer

but for simplicity; stick to the geometric interp for now

anonymous · Answer

but what is a scalar, that has somthing to do with vectors, right?

amistre64 · Answer

when you scale objects you magnify them or miniturise them

amistre64 · Answer

a scalar is just what you magnify/minituify a vector with and its simply an multiplier

anonymous · Answer

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+a+scalar

amistre64 · Answer

3x+2y=5 represents an equation of a line right?  lets scale it

6(3x+2y=5)

18x +12y = 30

amistre64 · Answer

same concept for scaling vectors

anonymous · Answer

despicable me...

anonymous · Answer

a scalar is called a scalar 'coz if you multiply a vvector with one it "scales" it.. increases it's size!