Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2023 / Paper 1 / 1 / a

The three coordinate basis vectors are the partial derivatives of the position vector with respect to the three coordinates. Direct differentiation givesThe multivariable chain rule then gives $d\mathbf{x}={\mathbf{h}}_{\xi }d\xi +{\mathbf{h}}_{\theta }d\theta +{\mathbf{h}}_{\varphi }d\varphi$. These are coordinate tangent vectors, not necessarily unit vectors.