Scalar product

In mathematics, the dot product or scalar product (sometimes inner product in the context of Euclidean space, or rarely projection product for emphasizing the geometric significance), is an algebraic operation that takes two equal-length sequences of numbers (usually coordinate vectors) and returns a single number. This operation can be defined either algebraically or geometrically. Algebraically, it is the sum of the products of the corresponding entries of the two sequences of numbers. Geometrically, it is the product of the Euclidean magnitudes of the two vectors and the cosine of the angle between them. The name "dot product" is derived from the centered dot " · " that is often used to designate this operation; the alternative name "scalar product" emphasizes that the result is a scalar (rather than a vector).

In three-dimensional space, the dot product contrasts with the cross product of two vectors, which produces a pseudovector as the result. The dot product is directly related to the cosine of the angle between two vectors in Euclidean space of any number of dimensions.

The dot product may be defined algebraically or geometrically. The geometric definition is based on the notions of angle and distance (magnitude of vectors). The equivalence of these two definitions relies on having a Cartesian coordinate system for Euclidean space.

In modern presentations of Euclidean geometry, the points of space are defined in terms of their Cartesian coordinates, and Euclidean space itself is commonly identified with the real coordinate space Rⁿ. In such a presentation, the notions of length and angles are not primitive. They are defined by means of the dot product: the length of a vector is defined as the square root of the dot product of the vector by itself, and the cosine of the (non oriented) angle of two vectors of length one is defined as their dot product. So the equivalence of the two definitions of the dot product is a part of the equivalence of the classical and the modern formulations of Euclidean geometry.

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