Yes, this is exterior algebra. It's also interesting to figure out how this works in ambient dimensions other than three. The author has a table of grades: 0 for scalars, 1 for vectors, 2 for "bivectors", 3 for "trivectors", and they count the number of bases for each of these grades as 1 3 3 1. These basis counts are the dimensions of the (vector space of) scalars, vectors, "bivectors", "trivectors". If you go to two ambient dimensions you get 1 2 1, and if you go to four ambient dimensions you get 1 4 6 4 1. It's Pascal's triangle.