BSNS102 Study Guide - Final Guide: Coordinate Space, Linear Algebra, Cross Product

• School: University of Otago
• Department: Business Studies
• Course: BSNS102
• Professor: Drew Stelljes

Document Summary

C h a p t e r 5. In chapter 4, we discussed what vectors are geometrically and mentioned that the term vector has a precise definition in mathematics. This chapter describes in detail the mathematical operations we perform on vectors. For each operation, we will first define the mathematical rules for per- forming the operation and then describe the geometric interpretations of the operation. The branch of mathematics that deals primarily with vectors is called linear algebra. As men- tioned in section 4. 1, a vector is nothing more than an array of numbers in linear algebra. This highly generalized abstraction allows us to explore a large set of mathematical problems. For example, in linear algebra, vectors and matrices of dimension n are used to solve a system of n lin- ear equations for n unknowns. This is a very interesting and useful study, but it is not of primary interest to our investigation of 3d math.