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I think the moral of the story is: vectors in 2 or moreIt's the figuring out by students that worries me.
dimensions are easier to understand because we use a special
notation for them ab initio; vectors in 1 dimension are confusing
because we don't see the need for a special notation until it's
too late. (And when we get it figured out, we don't need the
special notation -- and everybody gets it figured out well
enough to cope eventually, so why bother? Believe it or not,
the New Math of the '60s came largely from a desire to eliminate
such sources of confusion -- and there's still fallout from that
disaster.)