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5: Span and Bases

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Intuition probably tells you that the plane R2 is of dimension two and that the space we live in R3 is of dimension three. You have probably also learned in physics that space-time has dimension four and that string theories are models that can live in ten dimensions. In this chapter we will give a mathematical definition of the dimension of a vector space. For this we will first need the notions of linear span, linear independence, and the basis of a vector space.

  • 5.1: Linear Span
    The linear span (or just span) of a set of vectors in a vector space is the intersection of all subspaces containing that set. The linear span of a set of vectors is therefore a vector space.
  • 5.2: Linear Independence
    We are now going to define the notion of linear independence of a list of vectors. This concept will be extremely important in the sections that follow, and especially when we introduce bases and the dimension of a vector space.
  • 5.3: Bases
    A basis of a finite-dimensional vector space is a spanning list that is also linearly independent. We will see that all bases for finite-dimensional vector spaces have the same length. This length will then be called the dimension of our vector space.
  • 5.4: Dimension
    We now come to the important definition of the dimension of a finite-dimensional vector space.
  • 5.E: Exercises for Chapter 5


This page titled 5: Span and Bases is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Isaiah Lankham, Bruno Nachtergaele, & Anne Schilling.

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