"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> Scalar values refer to scaling.
>
> According to a citation in the Oxford English Dictionary the first recorded
> usage of the term "scalar" in English came with W. R. Hamilton in 1846,
> referring to the real part of a quaternion:
> "The algebraically real part may receive, according to the question in which it
> occurs, all values contained on the one scale of progression of numbers from
> negative to positive infinity; we shall call it therefore the scalar part."
>
> Scala is the latin word for ladder, the English word scale comes from it
> and scalar is derivative from scalaris which is an adjective form of scala.
>
I did 'O' level latin, but didn't know/remember about scalaris (ladderlike) so
thanks. I now know why it is called a scalar.
>
> From comments here:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNk_zzaMoSs&list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab
>
>
I'd worry about learning linear algebra from this series of films. I've only
looked at 2 minutes of the first one but some concepts seemed to be confused. In
particular, he didn't seem to want to distinguish between the co-ordinate (x,y)
which is in no way re-locatable and the vector [x,y]^T which is.
>
>
> juicy tidbits:
> https://github.com/3b1b
>
> :O

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