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# Vector
Vector is a basic [mathematical](math.md) object that expresses direction and magnitude (such as velocity, force etc.) and is very often expressed as (and many times misledingly equated with) an "array of numbers". Nevertheless in programming 1 dimensional arrays are somewhat synonymous with vectors -- for example in two dimensional space an array `[4,3]` expresses a vector pointing 4 units to the "right" (along X axis) and 3 units "up" (along Y axis) and has the magnitude 5 (which is the vector's length). Vectors are one of the very basic concepts of advanced math and are used almost in any advanced area of math, physics, programming etc. -- basically all of physics and engineering operates with vectors, programmers will mostly encounter them in areas such as 3D [graphics](graphics.md), [physics engines](physics_engine.md) (forces, velocities, acceleration, ...), [machine learning](machine_learning.md) (feature vectors, ...) or [signal processing](signals.md) (e.g. [Fourier transform](fourier_transform.md) just interprets a signal as a vector and transforms it to a different basis) etc. In this article we will implicitly focus on vectors from programmer's point of view (i.e. "arrays of numbers"), which to a mathematician will seem very simplified, but we'll briefly also foreshadow the mathematical view.
Vector is a basic [mathematical](math.md) object that expresses direction and magnitude (such as velocity, force etc.) and is very often expressed as (and many times misleadingly equated with) an "array of numbers". Nevertheless in programming 1 dimensional arrays are somewhat synonymous with vectors -- for example in two dimensional space an array `[4,3]` expresses a vector pointing 4 units to the "right" (along X axis) and 3 units "up" (along Y axis) and has the magnitude 5 (which is the vector's length). Vectors are one of the very basic concepts of advanced math and are used almost in any advanced area of math, physics, programming etc. -- basically all of physics and engineering operates with vectors, programmers will mostly encounter them in areas such as 3D [graphics](graphics.md), [physics engines](physics_engine.md) (forces, velocities, acceleration, ...), [machine learning](machine_learning.md) (feature vectors, ...) or [signal processing](signals.md) (e.g. [Fourier transform](fourier_transform.md) just interprets a signal as a vector and transforms it to a different basis) etc. In this article we will implicitly focus on vectors from programmer's point of view (i.e. "arrays of numbers"), which to a mathematician will seem very simplified, but we'll briefly also foreshadow the mathematical view.
(NOTE: the term *vector* is used a lot in different contexts and fields, usually with some connection to the mathematical idea of vector which is sometimes however very loose, e.g. in low-level programming *vector* means a memory holding an address of some event handler. It's better to just look up what "vector" means in your specific area of interest.)