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I'm looking for a word to encompass position, size, and vector in a cartesian plane, their common characteristic being that they're all expressible as a pair of scalar values. This question is somewhat similar. The OP is looking for a word to encompass volume, shape, and size. The question is problematic already, given that volume and size are the same thing. Further, it's over four years old. (And of course, none of the answers really work for my question.)

I poked around here on meta to get some guidance, and I found this answer about rejuvenating old questions. I'm not sure it applies here, as I am not the OP.

Should I edit the old question such that it makes more sense, so it will move back into the active questions, or just ask my question independently and make it clear that I'm not asking the same question?

For reference, here's how I would word it--the first paragraph asks my specific question, while the second broadens it to include the original question, minus the problematic part.

A single word to encompass the concepts of point, size, and vector

I'm looking for a word to encompass position, size, and vector, their common characteristic being that they're all expressible as a pair of scalar values.

I'm writing for a fairly mathematical audience, and it would be great to make them think I'm smarter than I really am, so rather than a pair of scalars in a plane, a word for any generic n-tuple of scalars in an n-dimensional space will do just fine.

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    I would say that you should ask the question independently and make it clear that you're not asking the same question, but unfortunately the answer that seems best to me, 'metrics', applies equally to the older question. Note also that single-word-requests should include a sample sentence the desired word would plug into.
    – JEL
    Feb 25, 2019 at 5:20
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    I think you’ll struggle because you’re somewhat mixing concepts. A position is indeed a pair of scalars in the plane, but a vector is two pairs of scalars in the plane. In fact, in n-dimensional space, a n-tuple of scalars is precisely a point (or your position, and a vector is two of those.
    – Dan Bron
    Feb 25, 2019 at 10:12
  • I agree, go ahead and write your own question with a link to the other and a sample sentence. I can imagine terms that would work in one situation but not the other, so I don't think you'll be as satisfied with updating the older question.
    – 1006a
    Feb 25, 2019 at 15:03
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    Volume and size are not the same thing when talking about rooms (as in the example given in that other question). A room’s size is given in square units; its volume in cubic units.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Feb 27, 2019 at 1:04

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I would just leave the old question alone and ask a new one. You should:

  • Follow the instructions for [single-word-requests] (you are missing a sample sentence, for one).
  • Link to the old similar question and mention how the question is different and why the answers don't work.

This comes with none of these downsides that you would have if you just made an edit:

  • The edit may invalidate the answers (because it's not the same question exactly)
  • The owner may rollback the changes at any time
  • Old bumped questions don't get the views that new questions do
  • You don't get notified (or reputation gains) on posts you edit
  • Accepting an answer is out of your control
  • The question would have to be reopened (it was closed sometime between me first posting this answer and now)

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