Scalars

This short lesson is mainly about terminology. It is important that the concept of a scalar is clear, as everything else builds on top of this concept and I will be referring to it later in the course.

A scalar gets its name from the verb “to scale”. That is because it contains the notion of “how much bigger or smaller do we want something”. It “scales” something.

Usually, in most basic mathematics, this will be some element of $\mathbb{R}$ (the real numbers). Some examples include numbers like $1$, $4$, $\pi$, $\sqrt{2}$.

We will get back to the concept of “scaling” when we talk about scalar multiplication.