In the following section, we will review the mathematical concepts of vectors, matrices, arithmetic symbols, and linear algebra, as well as some more subtle notations that are used by data scientists.
A vector is defined as an object with both magnitude and direction. This definition, however, is a bit complicated. For our purpose, a vector is simply a 1-dimensional array representing a series of numbers. Put another way, a vector is a list of numbers.
It is generally represented using an arrow or bold font, as follows:
Vectors are broken into components, which are individual members of the vector. We use index notations to denote the element that we are referring to, as follows:
In Python, we can represent arrays in many ways. We...