Option to make vectorize the default instead of dot product

[DJF]

In all my years of using Mathcad, I've never had to calculate the dot product.  Just not something I need to do.  I do, however, want Mathcad to find multiple solutions from multiple inputs on a regular basis.  But - I need to vectorize every equation where two vectors are multiplied.  This is time consuming and highly risky as if I miss one vectorize operation i'm going to get the wrong answer.  So, please give the user the option to make everything vectorized by default.  Ideally this would be done with a command (e.g. VecMult:=0 for dot product, VecMult:=1 for vectorize)

[Werner_E]

I tend to vote against that idea.

Sure, Mathcad is an engineering tool, but Mathcad is also a math program and as such its supposed to do its math correct.

That means if you multiply 2 vectors, then result has to be the dot product and nothing else.

While I understand the wish not to have to vectorize all calculations I don't like the idea to have an option which tells Mathcad to do something mathematically ewrong. You may ask for a new proprietary multiplication operator which looks different from the normal one and does the same what a vectorized product achieves.

Mathcad does its best to serve the engineer, I guess. If v is a vector and you write v^2, from a mathematical point of view you should get an error as this operation is not defined for vectors. Instead Mathcad resorts to automatic vectorization. I know that this convenient behavior is ever so often good for confusion as people are not sure why they have to vectorize in one case and need not to do so in the other. My advise is to use explicit vectorization explicitly always when you want vectorization done and not vector operations. Even as engineers we have to be aware that a vector primarily is not just a list of different input values but a well defined mathematical object.

Maybe we need a new data type, a list of values, but if I look at the confusion we always see between vectors and ranges, I doubt that this would make things easier. Nevertheless I'd vote for lists - they would be quite helpful.

[olivierlp]

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