Is Theta Commonly Used to Represent the Zero Vector in Linear Algebra?

[TheTangent]

I'm looking at a Linear Algebra book that is using the greek letter θ for the zero vector. And the book has other bold letters, so it can't be that they simply could not make a bold zero.

Has anyone seen such a usage before?

 

[Deveno]

I'm looking at a Linear Algebra book that is using the greek letter θ for the zero vector. And the book has other bold letters, so it can't be that they simply could not make a bold zero.

Has anyone seen such a usage before?

sure. one of the reasons why, is because the 0-vector in a vector space might be rather "unusual". for example, the following is a vector space:

V = R⁺ = {x in R: x > 0}

the vector sum of x and y is defined to be xy,

the scalar product of a real number c, and a vector x is defined to be: x^c.

in this vector space, the 0-vector is the real number 1.

 

[dx]

It done so that you don't get confused between the number 0 and the vector 0.