• minyakcurry@monyet.cc
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    4 months ago

    I say openly that I’m bad at math because I cannot, even with intense effort, intuit concepts that are laid out as pure mathematical expressions. Why do graphs have eigenvectors? What does that even look like?!

    • Coconut1233@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Graphs don’t have vectors, spaces do. A space is just an n-dimensional “graph”. Vectors written in columns next to each other are matrices. Matrices can describe transformation of space, and if the transformation is linear (straight lines stay straight) there will be some vectors that stay the same (unaffected by the transformation). These are called eigenvectors.

      • minyakcurry@monyet.cc
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        4 months ago

        Thanks for the response! Honestly wasn’t expecting any. I understand what you’re saying as a pure student would, but could you explain what you mean by “a space is a just an n-dimensional graph”?

        Would the vertices map to some coordinate in space? Or am I completely misunderstanding.