We revisit the definitions of linear independence, bases, and dimension in the context of abstract vector spaces.

VSP-0060: Bases and Dimension for Abstract Vector Spaces

When working with and subspaces of we developed several fundamental ideas including span, linear independence, bases and dimension. We will find that these concepts generalize easily to abstract vector spaces and that analogous results hold in these new settings.

Linear Independence

Bases and Dimension

Recall that our motivation for defining a basis of a subspace of was to have a collection of vectors such that every vector of the subspace can be expressed as a unique linear combination of the vectors in that collection. Definition def:basis we gave in VSP-0030 generalizes to abstract vector spaces as follows.

Proof
By the definition of a basis, we know that can be written as a linear combination of . Suppose there are two such representations. Then, But then we have:

Because are linearly independent, we have for . Consequently for .

In VSP-0035 we defined the dimension of a subspace of to be the number of elements in a basis. (Definition def:dimension) We will adopt this definition for abstract vector spaces. As before, to ensure that dimension is well-defined we need to establish that this definition is independent of our choice of a basis. The proof of the following theorem is identical to the proof of its counterpart in . (Theorem th:dimwelldefined)

Now we can state the definition.

In our discussion to this point we have always assumed that a basis is nonempty and hence that the dimension of the space is at least . However, the zero space has no basis. To accommodate for this, we will say that the zero vector space is defined to have dimension :

Our insistence that amounts to saying that the empty set of vectors is a basis of . Thus the statement that “the dimension of a vector space is the number of vectors in any basis” holds even for the zero space.

Finite-Dimensional Vector Spaces

Our definition of dimension of a vector space depends on the vector space having a basis. In this section we will establish that any vector space spanned by finitely many vectors has a basis.

Given a finite-dimensional vector space we will find a basis for by starting with a linearly independent subset of and expanding it to a basis. The following results are more general versions of Lemmas lemma:atmostnlinindinrn and lemma:expandinglinindset, and Theorem th:dimwelldefined of VSP-0035. The proofs are identical and we will omit them.

Coordinate Vectors

Recall that in the context of (and subspaces of ) the requirement that elements of a basis be linearly independent guarantees that every element of the vector space has a unique representation in terms of the elements of the basis. (See Theorem th:linindbasis of VSP-0030) We proved the same property for abstract vector spaces in Theorem th:uniquerep.

Uniqueness of representation in terms of the elements of a basis allows us to associate every element of a vector space with a unique coordinate vector with respect to a given basis. Coordinate vectors were first introduced in VSP-0030. We now give a formal definition.

Coordinate vectors will play a vital role in establishing one of the most fundamental results in linear algebra, that all -dimensional vector spaces have the same structure as . In Example ex:p2isor3 of LTR-0060, for instance, we will show that is essentially the same as .

Practice Problems

Prove that set of Example ex:CAbasis is linearly independent.
Show that each of the following sets of vectors is linearly independent.
in
in

in

Show that each set in Practice Problems prob:linindabstractvsp1-prob:linindabstractvsp3 is a basis for its respective vector space.
Find the coordinate vector for with respect to the given basis of .
Answer:
Answer:
Find the coordinate vector for with respect to the basis Answer:
Let be a vector space of dimension . Suppose is linearly independent in . Show that is a basis for .

Text Source

The discussion of the zero space was adapted from Section 6.3 of Keith Nicholson’s Linear Algebra with Applications. (CC-BY-NC-SA)

W. Keith Nicholson, Linear Algebra with Applications, Lyryx 2018, Open Edition, p. 349

Example Source

Examples ex:polyindset and ex:CAbasis were adapted from Examples 6.3.1 and 6.3.10 of Keith Nicholson’s Linear Algebra with Applications. (CC-BY-NC-SA)

W. Keith Nicholson, Linear Algebra with Applications, Lyryx 2018, Open Edition, p. 346, 350

Exercise Source

Practice Problems prob:linindabstractvsp1, prob:linindabstractvsp2 and prob:linindabstractvsp3 are Exercises 6.3(a)(b)(c) from Keith Nicholson’s Linear Algebra with Applications. (CC-BY-NC-SA)

W. Keith Nicholson, Linear Algebra with Applications, Lyryx 2018, Open Edition, p. 351