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Trivector
In multilinear algebra, a multivector, sometimes called Clifford number, is an element of the exterior algebra of a vector space . This algebra is graded, associative and alternating, and consists of linear combinations of simple -vectors (also known as decomposable -vectors or -blades) of the form : v_1\wedge\cdots\wedge v_k, where v_1, \ldots, v_k are in . A -vector is such a linear combination that is ''homogeneous'' of degree (all terms are -blades for the same ). Depending on the authors, a "multivector" may be either a -vector or any element of the exterior algebra (any linear combination of -blades with potentially differing values of ). In differential geometry, a -vector is a vector in the exterior algebra of the tangent vector space; that is, it is an antisymmetric tensor obtained by taking linear combinations of the exterior product of tangent vectors, for some integer . A differential -form is a -vector in the exterior algebra of the dual of the tangent space ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multilinear Algebra
Multilinear algebra is a subfield of mathematics that extends the methods of linear algebra. Just as linear algebra is built on the concept of a vector and develops the theory of vector spaces, multilinear algebra builds on the concepts of ''p''-vectors and multivectors with Grassmann algebras. Origin In a vector space of dimension ''n'', normally only vectors are used. However, according to Hermann Grassmann and others, this presumption misses the complexity of considering the structures of pairs, triplets, and general multi-vectors. With several combinatorial possibilities, the space of multi-vectors has 2''n'' dimensions. The abstract formulation of the determinant is the most immediate application. Multilinear algebra also has applications in the mechanical study of material response to stress and strain with various moduli of elasticity. This practical reference led to the use of the word tensor, to describe the elements of the multilinear space. The extra structure in a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vector (mathematics And Physics)
In mathematics and physics, vector is a term that refers colloquially to some quantities that cannot be expressed by a single number (a scalar), or to elements of some vector spaces. Historically, vectors were introduced in geometry and physics (typically in mechanics) for quantities that have both a magnitude and a direction, such as displacements, forces and velocity. Such quantities are represented by geometric vectors in the same way as distances, masses and time are represented by real numbers. The term ''vector'' is also used, in some contexts, for tuples, which are finite sequences of numbers of a fixed length. Both geometric vectors and tuples can be added and scaled, and these vector operations led to the concept of a vector space, which is a set equipped with a vector addition and a scalar multiplication that satisfy some axioms generalizing the main properties of operations on the above sorts of vectors. A vector space formed by geometric vectors is called a Euclidean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford (4 May 18453 March 1879) was an English mathematician and philosopher. Building on the work of Hermann Grassmann, he introduced what is now termed geometric algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his honour. The operations of geometric algebra have the effect of mirroring, rotating, translating, and mapping the geometric objects that are being modelled to new positions. Clifford algebras in general and geometric algebra in particular have been of ever increasing importance to mathematical physics, geometry, and computing. Clifford was the first to suggest that gravitation might be a manifestation of an underlying geometry. In his philosophical writings he coined the expression ''mind-stuff''. Biography Born at Exeter, England, Exeter, William Clifford showed great promise at school. He went on to King's College London (at age 15) and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1868, after being second Wrangler (Universi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hodge Star Operator
In mathematics, the Hodge star operator or Hodge star is a linear map defined on the exterior algebra of a finite-dimensional oriented vector space endowed with a nondegenerate symmetric bilinear form. Applying the operator to an element of the algebra produces the Hodge dual of the element. This map was introduced by W. V. D. Hodge. For example, in an oriented 3-dimensional Euclidean space, an oriented plane can be represented by the exterior product of two basis vectors, and its Hodge dual is the normal vector given by their cross product; conversely, any vector is dual to the oriented plane perpendicular to it, endowed with a suitable bivector. Generalizing this to an -dimensional vector space, the Hodge star is a one-to-one mapping of -vectors to -vectors; the dimensions of these spaces are the binomial coefficients \tbinom nk = \tbinom. The naturalness of the star operator means it can play a role in differential geometry, when applied to the cotangent bundle of a ps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plücker Coordinates
In geometry, Plücker coordinates, introduced by Julius Plücker in the 19th century, are a way to assign six homogeneous coordinates to each line in projective 3-space, P3. Because they satisfy a quadratic constraint, they establish a one-to-one correspondence between the 4-dimensional space of lines in P3 and points on a quadric in P5 (projective 5-space). A predecessor and special case of Grassmann coordinates (which describe ''k''-dimensional linear subspaces, or ''flats'', in an ''n''-dimensional Euclidean space), Plücker coordinates arise naturally in geometric algebra. They have proved useful for computer graphics, and also can be extended to coordinates for the screws and wrenches in the theory of kinematics used for robot control. Geometric intuition A line L in 3-dimensional Euclidean space is determined by two distinct points that it contains, or by two distinct planes that contain it. Consider the first case, with points x=(x_1,x_2,x_3) and y=(y_1,y_2,y_3). The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duality (projective Geometry)
In geometry, a striking feature of projective planes is the symmetry of the roles played by points and lines in the definitions and theorems, and (plane) duality is the formalization of this concept. There are two approaches to the subject of duality, one through language () and the other a more functional approach through special mappings. These are completely equivalent and either treatment has as its starting point the axiomatic version of the geometries under consideration. In the functional approach there is a map between related geometries that is called a ''duality''. Such a map can be constructed in many ways. The concept of plane duality readily extends to space duality and beyond that to duality in any finite-dimensional projective geometry. Principle of duality A projective plane may be defined axiomatically as an incidence structure, in terms of a set of ''points'', a set of ''lines'', and an incidence relation that determines which points lie on which lines. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Affine Space
In mathematics, an affine space is a geometric structure that generalizes some of the properties of Euclidean spaces in such a way that these are independent of the concepts of distance and measure of angles, keeping only the properties related to parallelism and ratio of lengths for parallel line segments. In an affine space, there is no distinguished point that serves as an origin. Hence, no vector has a fixed origin and no vector can be uniquely associated to a point. In an affine space, there are instead ''displacement vectors'', also called ''translation'' vectors or simply ''translations'', between two points of the space. Thus it makes sense to subtract two points of the space, giving a translation vector, but it does not make sense to add two points of the space. Likewise, it makes sense to add a displacement vector to a point of an affine space, resulting in a new point translated from the starting point by that vector. Any vector space may be viewed as an affine spa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grassmann Coordinates
Hermann Günther Grassmann (german: link=no, Graßmann, ; 15 April 1809 – 26 September 1877) was a German polymath known in his day as a linguist and now also as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, general scholar, and publisher. His mathematical work was little noted until he was in his sixties. Biography Hermann Grassmann was the third of 12 children of Justus Günter Grassmann, an ordained minister who taught mathematics and physics at the Stettin Gymnasium, where Hermann was educated. Grassmann was an undistinguished student until he obtained a high mark on the examinations for admission to Prussian universities. Beginning in 1827, he studied theology at the University of Berlin, also taking classes in classical languages, philosophy, and literature. He does not appear to have taken courses in mathematics or physics. Although lacking university training in mathematics, it was the field that most interested him when he returned to Stettin in 1830 after completing h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Projective Space
In mathematics, the concept of a projective space originated from the visual effect of perspective, where parallel lines seem to meet ''at infinity''. A projective space may thus be viewed as the extension of a Euclidean space, or, more generally, an affine space with points at infinity, in such a way that there is one point at infinity of each direction of parallel lines. This definition of a projective space has the disadvantage of not being isotropic, having two different sorts of points, which must be considered separately in proofs. Therefore, other definitions are generally preferred. There are two classes of definitions. In synthetic geometry, ''point'' and ''line'' are primitive entities that are related by the incidence relation "a point is on a line" or "a line passes through a point", which is subject to the axioms of projective geometry. For some such set of axioms, the projective spaces that are defined have been shown to be equivalent to those resulting from the fol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parallelepiped
In geometry, a parallelepiped is a three-dimensional figure formed by six parallelograms (the term ''rhomboid'' is also sometimes used with this meaning). By analogy, it relates to a parallelogram just as a cube relates to a square. In Euclidean geometry, the four concepts—''parallelepiped'' and ''cube'' in three dimensions, ''parallelogram'' and ''square'' in two dimensions—are defined, but in the context of a more general affine geometry, in which angles are not differentiated, only ''parallelograms'' and ''parallelepipeds'' exist. Three equivalent definitions of ''parallelepiped'' are *a polyhedron with six faces (hexahedron), each of which is a parallelogram, *a hexahedron with three pairs of parallel faces, and *a prism of which the base is a parallelogram. The rectangular cuboid (six rectangular faces), cube (six square faces), and the rhombohedron (six rhombus faces) are all specific cases of parallelepiped. "Parallelepiped" is now usually pronounced or ; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dover Books
Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be scarce or historically significant. Dover republishes these books, making them available at a significantly reduced cost. Classic reprints Dover reprints classic works of literature, classical sheet music, and public-domain images from the 18th and 19th centuries. Dover also publishes an extensive collection of mathematical, scientific, and engineering texts. It often targets its reprints at a niche market, such as woodworking. Starting in 2015, the company branched out into graphic novel reprints, overseen by Dover acquisitions editor and former comics writer and editor Drew Ford. Most Dover reprints are photo facsimiles of the originals, retaining the original pagination an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harley Flanders
Harley M. Flanders (September 13, 1925 – July 26, 2013) was an American mathematician, known for several textbooks and contributions to his fields: algebra and algebraic number theory, linear algebra, electrical networks, scientific computing. Life Flanders was a sophomore calculus student of Lester R. Ford at the Illinois Institute of Technology and asked for more challenging reading. Ford recommended ''A Course in Mathematical Analysis'' by Edouard Goursat, translated by Earle Hedrick, which included challenging exercises. Flanders recalled in 2001 that the final exercise required a proof of a formula for the derivatives of a composite function, generalizing the chain rule, in a form now called the Faa di Bruno formula.H. Flanders (2001) "From Ford to Faa", American Mathematical Monthly 108(6): 558–61 Flanders received his bachelors (1946), masters (1947) and PhD (1949) at the University of Chicago on the dissertation ''Unification of class field theory'' advised by Ott ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
