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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". 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 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.
(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.)