Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2014 October 2

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October 2

Span - definition of the term

Hi there,

Reading an article on Spherical Harmonics I ran into a formula:

$V_{l}=\operatorname {Span} (Y_{l}^{-l},Y_{l}^{-l+1},....,Y_{l}^{l-1},Y_{l}^{l})$

I wonder if there is a strict definition for the term Span? It is sort of self-explanatory and at the same time it is "slippery." I could not find it among math terminology.

Thanks, - --AboutFace 22 (talk) 16:19, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I didn't look at your article, but it's probably linear span. Staecker (talk) 16:48, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

If you look at the section Connection with representation theory in out article Spherical harmonics it discusses the point from the paper.Phoenixia1177 (talk) 05:20, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Phoenixia1177. thank you for the pointer. Although I have seen the Spherical Harmonics article before a number of times I never really focused on the section you mention and now I found a few quite important assertions there. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 19:29, 3 October 2014 (UTC)