The fundamental building blocks of linear algebra are vectors. Vectors are defined as quantities having both direction and magnitude, compared to scalar quantities that only have magnitude. In order to have direction and magnitude, vector quantities consist of two or more elements of data. The dimensionality of a vector is determined by the number of numerical elements in that vector. For example, a vector with four elements would have a dimensionality of four.

Let’s take a look at examples of a scalar versus a vector. A car driving at a speed of 40mph is a scalar quantity. Describing the car driving 40mph to the east would represent a two-dimensional vector quantity since it has a magnitude in both the x and y directions.

Vectors can be represented as a series of numbers enclosed in parentheses, angle brackets, or square brackets. In this lesson, we will use square brackets for consistency. For example, a three-dimensional vector is written as:

$v = \begin{bmatrix}
           x \\
           y \\
           z
    \end{bmatrix}$

The magnitude (or length) of a vector, ||v||, can be calculated with the following formula:

$||v|| = \sqrt{\sum\limits_{i=1}^{n} v_{i}^2}$

This formulates translates to the sum of each vector component squared, which can be also written out as:

$||v|| = \sqrt{v_{1}^2 + v_{2}^2 + \dots + v_{n}^2}$

Let’s look at an example. We are told that a ball is traveling through the air and given the velocities of that ball in its x, y, and z directions in a standard Cartesian coordinate system. The velocity component values are:

• x = -12
• y = 8
• z = -2

Convert the velocities into a vector, and find the total speed of the ball. (Hint: the speed of the ball is the magnitude of the velocity vector!)

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Solution