Orthogonal vectors

Two vectors are orthogonal when their inner product is zero.

An orthogonal basis of an inner-product vector space consists of nonzero mutually orthogonal vectors that span the space. The orthogonal projection of $v$ onto a finite-dimensional span is ${\sum }_i⟨v,u_i⟩u_i/⟨u_i,u_i⟩$. Dividing each vector by its norm produces an orthonormal basis. For centered random variables, the inner product is covariance; an orthogonal basis therefore consists of uncorrelated variables, without requiring unit variance.