Why is a dot product called a dot product?

Question

I have just started learning about vectors at school, and some of the applications of vectors are still a bit confusing to me.

I'm hoping that finding out the etymology behind the word dot product can help me better understand what a dot product is. In other words, its one thing to be able to follow the dot product formula, but another to actually know what a dot product is and why it's called dot product instead of something more self-descriptive.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

The dot product of two vectors will return a scalar. 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 " · " (used to denote multiplication) that is often used to designate this operation; the alternative name "scalar product" emphasizes that the result is a scalar (rather than a vector). For more information : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_product