"To understand the secant equation, consider hessian matrix $H$ and an arbitrary vector $s$. Define $y$ as hessian-vector product with vector $s$, so $Hs = y$. This is the secant equation. In quasi-newton methods $y_k = \\nabla f(x_k) - \\nabla f(x_{k-1})$ actually estimates hessian-vector product with $s_k=x_k - x_{k-1}$ through the finite difference formula (I am too lazy to write it now but it's very easy to show). And you can, indeed, use any other vector in place of $s$, provided you can compute a hessian-vector product with it.\n",
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