Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A scalar is an element of a field which is used to define a vector space.In linear algebra, real numbers or generally elements of a field are called scalars and relate to vectors in an associated vector space through the operation of scalar multiplication (defined in the vector space), in which a vector can be multiplied by a scalar in the defined way to produce another vector.
A scalar in physics and other areas of science is also a scalar in mathematics, as an element of a mathematical field used to define a vector space.For example, the magnitude (or length) of an electric field vector is calculated as the square root of its absolute square (the inner product of the electric field with itself); so, the inner product's result is an element of the mathematical field ...
An algebraic structure may be based on other algebraic structures with operations and axioms involving several structures. For instance, a vector space involves a second structure called a field, and an operation called scalar multiplication between elements of the field (called scalars), and elements of the vector space (called vectors).
Mathematically, a scalar field on a region U is a real or complex-valued function or distribution on U. [1] [2] The region U may be a set in some Euclidean space, Minkowski space, or more generally a subset of a manifold, and it is typical in mathematics to impose further conditions on the field, such that it be continuous or often continuously differentiable to some order.
In mathematics, an algebra over a field (often simply called an algebra) is a vector space equipped with a bilinear product.Thus, an algebra is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with operations of multiplication and addition and scalar multiplication by elements of a field and satisfying the axioms implied by "vector space" and "bilinear".
Scalar multiplication of a vector by a factor of 3 stretches the vector out. The scalar multiplications −a and 2a of a vector a. In mathematics, scalar multiplication is one of the basic operations defining a vector space in linear algebra [1] [2] [3] (or more generally, a module in abstract algebra [4] [5]).
When the scalar field is the real numbers, the vector space is called a real vector space, and when the scalar field is the complex numbers, the vector space is called a complex vector space. [4] These two cases are the most common ones, but vector spaces with scalars in an arbitrary field F are also commonly considered.
An analogy is the difference between scalar and vector arithmetic. A superscalar processor is a mixture of the two. A superscalar processor is a mixture of the two. Each instruction processes one data item, but there are multiple execution units within each CPU thus multiple instructions can be processing separate data items concurrently.