In mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, the dot product or scalar product is an algebraic operation that takes two equal-length sequences of numbers (usually coordinate vector

Coordinate vector

In linear algebra, a coordinate vector is an explicit representation of a vector in an abstract vector space as an ordered list of numbers or, equivalently, as an element of the coordinate space Fn....

s) and returns a single number obtained by multiplying corresponding entries and then summing those products. The name "dot product" is derived from the centered dot

Interpunct

An interpunct —also called an interpoint—is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, which also appears in some modern languages as a stand-alone sign inside a word. It is present in Unicode as code point ....

 "  " that is often used to designate this operation; the alternative name "scalar product" emphasizes the scalar

Scalar (mathematics)

In linear algebra, real numbers are called scalars and relate to vectors in a vector space through the operation of scalar multiplication, in which a vector can be multiplied by a number to produce another vector....

 (rather than vector) nature of the result.