What is the difference between the symbols for multiplication, dot product, and cross product symbols? How can we tell them apart?
$\endgroup$ 11 Answer
$\begingroup$Often, the exact same symbol is used. You have to pay attention to context:
When you see $$ x \times y $$ and $x,y$ were defined to be vectors, it's cross product. On the other hand if $x,y$ were defined to be numbers, it's multiplication. (For that matter, the kind of multiplication depends on the kind of number they are.)
When you see $$ x \cdot y $$ and $x,y$ were defined to be vectors, it's dot product. On the other hand if $x,y$ were defined to be numbers, it's again multiplication.
