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What does lambda mean

Can anyone explain what lambda actually means, I can do all questions on the topic but dont even know what it stands for, is it the gradient of the vector?

Reply 1

tory88

You're going to have to be more specific - what topic are you referring to? Can you give an example of somewhere you've seen it come up? Commonly Lambda indicates the wavelength - the distance between two wave peaks for a regular wave - but that doesn't seem to chime with what you say.

Reply 2

A Wise Ninja

It's the proportion of a direction that is travelled, e.g. you'd have lamda 2i + 3j, and if lamda = 2 then you'd travel in the direction vector 2i + 3j for 2 units.

Reply 3

james22

Need some context here. Often it is used as a general scalar.

Reply 4

Hanvyj

It's a greek letter used to describe a lot of things... You have to give some context.

You are asking something similar to "What does v mean?"

What you need to be saying is the equivalent of: "What does velocity mean, commonly represented as the letter v?" Or "What is letter v used to represent in kinetic/movement physics (or whatever its called lol)"

Reply 5

A Wise Ninja

He's mentioned the word 'vector', so I presumed OP meant the scalar in a vector equation

Reply 6

Implication

If you're talking about the vector equation of a line, then the letter before the direction vector (often lambda) is just an arbitrary constant. For example

\binom{1}{2} + \lambda \binom{3}{4}

This is the vector equation of a line in the direction of (3,4), passing through the point (1,2). If we let lambda be a specific value, then we just have a point. But that's the purpose of it; you can pick any value of lambda you want, and it determines how far away from (1,2) in the direction of (3,4) your position is. Essentially, whatever value of lambda you pick describes one specific point on the line described by the equation. By varying lambda infinitely, we create the infinite number of points that lie along the line - and this is how the vector equation defines the line.

Reply 7

Stobythewise1

It means London ,arts ,music , basic dramatic arts

Reply 8

ninuzu

You need to give some context, OP.

Reply 9

davidtyoember

Original post by helpme456

Can anyone explain what lambda actually means, I can do all questions on the topic but dont even know what it stands for, is it the gradient of the vector?

tis a value of proportionality in the case you are talking about.

basically if it was like (I will use y as lambda sincer it looks like it upside down) in the form y(2i - 3j) or something, it means that that particular vector is scaled by a factor of lambda.