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Position is not a vector- it doesn't transform in the right way. Someone should fix this. -DB

I added a section expressing the relationship between a position vectors and displacement vectors which I think clarifies their actual meaning. This may address DB's objection about how they transform and give the novice reader some better understanding. Comment or correct (or delete) as you see fit.

General Philosophy: I think the best understanding of vectors is as abelian groups (of actions) which one can invoke without explicitly using the words "group" or "abelian". I.e. adding vectors is a "do this and then do that" operation. Hence for example a velocity vector is a "boost" action (or more precisely the boost relative to an origin velocity defining an inertial frame) and we see why simple velocity addition doesn't work in SR because boosts no longer commute.

Anyway starting with vectors as displacements the new student can understand implicitly how to add them visually head to tail, as composite acts and eventually by adding components. Then with that understood a position vector as it depends on a choice of origin is also simple to understand. Regards, James Baugh (talk) 21:27, 9 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Really - are these terms even in use? I've never come across them before, except for some a few years ago when reading Wikipedia before I started to edit, but then those were not sourced at the time. There is no source - they should be deleted, only velocity and acceleration are the most useful and meaningful derivatives of position, you never need the others. They are making a joke out of the article as though it were a bowl of rice crispies.... -- F = q(E + v × B) 00:48, 13 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

They are not a joke. The term jerk is commonly used in kinematics (we have an article in Wikipedia about that). Somebody proposed the names for the (rarely used) higher order derivatives in some university (you can find the source with Google), but they are not standard names, so I removed them. See also Talk:Displacement (vector), where the same topic was discussed. Paolo.dL (talk) 14:10, 13 January 2012 (UTC)Reply

The dotted line from P is not parallel to the diagonal of the rectangle from O. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.103.218.64 (talk) 06:53, 22 May 2022 (UTC)Reply