The question\'s pretty self-explanatory really. I know vaguely about vectors in maths, but I don\'t really see the link to C++ vectors.
To complement the excellent response from @MarkRuzon:
Alex said that to give a name to what is now called std::vector he observed the name that Scheme and Common Lisp had given to similar data structures.
Later he admits he was wrong because C++ vector has nothing to do with the vectors in mathematics.
He also says that he introduced an error of a community of 50 people to a community of 5 million people, so the error is likely to remain forever.