field real numbers set binary operations axioms Elements vector addition scalar multiplication
A vector space over a field F (often the field of the real numbers) is a set V equipped with two binary operations satisfying the following axioms. Elements of V are called vectors, and elements of F are called scalars. The first operation, vector addition, takes any two vectors v and w and outputs a third vector v + w. The second operation, scalar multiplication, takes any scalar a and any vector v and outputs a new vector av. The axioms that addition and scalar multiplication must satisfy are the following. (In the list below, u, v and w are arbitrary elements of V, and a and b are arbitrary scalars in the field F.)
