CHAPTER IV

VECTORS - Leslie Vine A. Deloso

 A VECTOR is a
quantity that has both
MAGNITUDE and
DIRECTION.
An example of a VECTOR.
 Two vectors can be added using geometric means by using:

PARALLELOGRAM LAW
To add two vectors u and v, we place the tail of v at
the head of u and then draw a line from the tail of u to
the tip of v, this new vector is u + v.

u v

v+u

Addition of two vectors.

 a b

b a
 n
VECTORS in R
n-tuples of real numbers:
u = (u 1 , u 2 , . . . , u n )

VECTORS in R
The numbers ui are called the
components of u.
Example:
u = (3, -2, 4)
3
where μis a vector in R .

n
 VECTOR ADDITION

Vectors can be represented by a list of numbers

arranged in a column. This is called a column
n
vector. We write a vector u in R as,
 Notice that if u and v are
valid lists of real numbers,
then so is their sum.
Therefore the sum u + v is
also a vector in Rn . We say
that Rn is closed under
vector addition.
SCALAR MULTIPLICATION

If we are dealing with a

real vector space, then the
scalar α must be a real
number. For a complex
vector space, α can be real
or complex.
Recall:
i 2 = −1, (i ) (−i ) =
+1
 THE ZERO VECTOR

To represent the zero vector in an abstract

vector space, we basically have just a list
of zeros. The property that a zero vector
must satisfy is
u+0=0+u=u
for any vector that belongs to a given
vector space. So, we have
The inverse of a vector is found by negating
all the components. If
 THE TRANSPOSE OF A
VECTOR
We now consider the transpose of a vector in Rn,
which is a row vector. For a vector
For vectors in a complex vector space, we call
the equivalent vector the conjugate and we
need to apply two steps to calculate it:

1. Take the transpose of the vector.

2. Compute the complex conjugate
of each component.
*The conjugate of a
vector in a complex
vector space is written as
u†.
*And the complex
conjugate is found by
letting i → −i.
 THE DOT or INNER
PRODUCT
The inner product is a number and so it is also
known as the scalar product. In a real vector
space, the scalar product between two vectors
If the inner product
of two vectors is
zero, we say that the
vectors are
Orthogonal.
To compute the inner product in a complex
vector space, we compute the con- jugate of
the first vector. We use the notation