[thaumasiotes]

> Because it's a definitional thing. A "scalar" is routinely defined as a real number, not an integer.

Well, this is totally untrue. A scalar is defined as a non-vector quantity, a single element as opposed to a multidimensional list of them.

[ajross]

Not to undergraduates in early mathematics courses it's not. This is a term introduced in grade school, for goodness sake.

I give up on this thread. It's a bunch of people not just willfully misunderstanding the linked article, but actively campaigning against the whole idea of math education in an attempt to prove how much smarter than each other they are. This is... awful, folks.

[gizmo686]

Maybe because the article was talking about undergraduates:

> Could one devise a university-level question that would catch a significant proportion of people out in a similar way? I’m not sure, but here’s an attempt.

> Which of the following is not a vector space with the obvious notions of addition and scalar multiplication?

> ...