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Inner product spaces
Lesson 8 of 10

Dot products and norms

Objective. Compute dot products, lengths and the angle between vectors.

The key idea

u · v = Σ uᵢvᵢ, the norm is √(v · v), and cos θ = (u · v)/(|u||v|).

Worked example

Find (1, 2, 2) · (2, 0, 1) and the length of (1, 2, 2).

1 … 2
Illustrated card showing 1 … 2
  1. 1Dot product: 2 + 0 + 2 = 4.
  2. 2Norm: √(1 + 4 + 4) = √9.

Answer: Dot product 4, length 3

Practice

Each question comes with a picture and a listen button. Try it first, then reveal the answer.

Common mistake. Forgetting the square root when computing a norm.

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