What is a vector? (TANTON Mathematics)

People say that a vector is "a quantity with both magnitude and direction." What does that mean?

This approach to vectors is too confusing. In this brief introduction allow me to demonstrate a more natural - and meaningful - approach to vectors. They're easy - and don't need to be made confusing.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• vectors

[linstah2222]

great video :) thanks

[DrJamesTanton]

@linstah2222 Super. Thanks! Feel free to poke around my website for more.

[vadrut]

thank you for your explanation

[xXOLLiEXxXTiMEXx]

Had so much trouble with this when my teacher taught me, you've helped loads THANKS!!!!

[crazyfun416]

Thank you.  This has helped so much.

[PresentBox]

jesus,it all makes sense now!

[TheStfu1000]

after the first 30 seconds and description read i knew this was good stuff. i looked this up after deciding to make my maths degree course easier as i thought why on earth do they require us to read 150 pages for each of 4 modules for just one term of learning. can't they deliver understanding more efficiently. hence the internet.

[sn1pedyou]

how the funk did i get here from photoshop tuts? lol anyway is there someone getting a tattoo in the background?

[gre36789]

You can avoid the bad notation by just defining displacement vectors relative to the origin. All you need to do is define some point to be your origin, ( 0, 0) and define two vectors A and B, pointing from the origin to the points A and B. I think it is silly how they teach vectors in High School. If you are going to teach physics, then you must teach vectors. I would teach the kids about basis vectors and unit vectors; and show them how to add vectors algebraically.

[MrVudkos]

This is great! for some reason, mat at B level doesn't teach vectors, but we have to use em in physics on B level... This makes no sense, and everyone in class is completely lost, and our physics teacher is just a tard, i had no idea what he was talking about, even though he "explained" it. this makes so much more sense!