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The direct product of two sets and
is defined to be the set of all points
where
and
. The
direct product is denoted
or
and is also called the Cartesian Product, since it originated
in Descartes'
formulation of analytic geometry. In the Cartesian view, points in the plane are specified
by their vertical and horizontal coordinates, with points on a line being specified by just one coordinate. The main
examples of direct products are Euclidean 3-space (
, where
are the Real Numbers), and the plane (
).