Home›Calculus 3›Dot product and angles›Problem 9.12

Dot product and angles

Problem 9.12 · easy

Let \( \displaystyle \mathbf{u} = \langle -1, -3, 0 \rangle \) and \( \displaystyle \mathbf{v} = \langle 5, -1, 5 \rangle \). Find \( \displaystyle \mathbf{u} \cdot \mathbf{v} \) and the angle between them.

\[ \left(-1\right) 5 + 0 \cdot 5 - 3 \left(-1\right) = -2 \]
Multiply componentwise and add.✓ Proved
\[ \sqrt{10} \]
|u|.
\[ \sqrt{51} \]
|v|.
\[ \frac{\left(-1\right) \sqrt{510}}{255} = - \frac{\sqrt{510}}{255} \]
cos θ = u·v / (|u||v|).
θ = arccos of that.

Answer \( \mathbf{u}\cdot\mathbf{v} = -2,\quad \theta = \operatorname{acos}{\left(- \frac{\sqrt{510}}{255} \right)} \approx 95.08^\circ \)

Lines: 1 proved, 4 not checked. The answer was also checked a second way, without looking at the solution. The reviewers disagree about how one step is explained; every verdict is in the receipt. How we verify

The full receipt

Line	Status	Checked by	Detail
1	✓ Proved	sympy 1.14.0	simplify(lhs - rhs) reduced to 0
2	Not checked	—	both sides are the same expression: the line states a value, and the working that produced it is not on the line
3	Not checked	—	both sides are the same expression: the line states a value, and the working that produced it is not on the line
4	Not checked	—	both sides are the same expression: the line states a value, and the working that produced it is not on the line
5	Not checked	—	a sentence; read, not computed
answer, a second way	✓ Checked independently	sympy 1.14.0 + mpmath 1.3.0	the law of cosines on the triangle u, v, u − v gives the same angle

Reviewers

gpt-oss:20b: pass
qwen3.6:27b-mlx: fail (error) — The dot product calculation in step 1 is incorrect; it yields -2 instead of the correct value of 2. Consequently, the final angle is wrong.

Every verdict on record (6)

qwen3.6:27b-mlx: fail (error) 2026-09-28 — The dot product calculation in step 1 is incorrect; it yields -2 instead of the correct value of 2. Consequently, the final angle is wrong.
gpt-oss:20b: pass 2026-09-28
qwen3.6:27b-mlx: fail (error) 2026-09-27 — The dot product calculation in step 1 is incorrect; it computes -2 instead of the correct value of 2. This error propagates to the final answer, which should be arccos(sqrt(510)/255).
gpt-oss:20b: pass 2026-09-27
qwen3.6:27b-mlx: pass 2026-09-26 — The solution correctly computes the dot product and magnitudes, applies the angle formula, and identifies the final answer as the arccosine of the computed cosine value.
gpt-oss:20b: pass 2026-09-26

Proved: SymPy reduced the difference between the two sides to zero. Checked independently: a separate method, named above, confirmed it. Checked numerically: the two sides agree at every sampled point, which is evidence, not proof. Reviewed: a model or a person read it; that is all a sentence can have. Solution by generator:structured/dot_product_angle, checked 2026-10-13 with SymPy 1.14.0.