Span refers to the distance or extent between two points. In various contexts, it can describe physical measurements, such as the span of a bridge, which is the length between its supports. It can also refer to time, like the lifespan of an organism, indicating how long it lives from birth to death.
In mathematics, span is a concept related to vectors. The span of a set of vectors is the collection of all possible linear combinations of those vectors. This concept is essential in linear algebra and helps in understanding vector spaces and their dimensions, often represented in relation to basis vectors.