Talk:Symmetric tensor
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Whoever tagged this page probably should have added some notes in the talk page. ^_^ It's not clear why it needs cleaning up... while it provides almost no information, that's what the stub notice indicates. The only thing I see is that it perhaps implies that all tensors are second order. --Starwed 02:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
This shouldn't be merged with symmetric matrix because a symmetric tensor of rank N, where N is not equal to 2, is a much different object than a symmetric matrix. I think there needs to be some clarification here, as the person who wrote it doesn't seem to understand the difference between a symmetric tensor and a symmetric tensor of rank 2 (i.e., a symmetric matrix).
- I am removing the merge tag per the above comment and I agree that cleanup is necessary, although I do not have the time at the moment to do it. VectorPosse 08:47, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
the definition in the page is simply wrong. Symmetric tensor is not generalization of Symmetric matrix, rather it is a tensor containing only itself as its isomera.
need expert 02 nov 2006
[edit] errors in the article
The article is suffering from some confusion between tensors and matrices. Currently the article says: "Symmetric rank 2 tensors can be diagonalized by choosing an orthogonal frame of eigenvectors." However that is nonsense as symmetric tensors map from one sort of vectors to their duals, so there is no concept of eigenvectors, or the tensor is mixed covariant contravariant and it makes no sense to call it symmetric (except in a specific basis). If someone can clean these errors up that would be great, otherwise I will delete the erroneous passages. --MarSch (talk) 11:06, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
