Basis (mathematics)

In mathematics, a set of elements (vectors) in a vector space V is called a basis, or a set of basis vectors, if the vectors are linearly independent and every vector in the vector space is a linear combination of this set. In more general terms, a basis is a linearly independent spanning set.

Given a basis of a vector space V, every element of V can be expressed uniquely as a linear combination of basis vectors, whose coefficients are referred to as vector coordinates or components. A vector space can have several distinct sets of basis vectors; however each such set has the same number of elements, with this number being the dimension of the vector space.

A basis B of a vector space V over a field F is a linearly independent subset of V that spans V.

In more detail, suppose that B = { v₁, …, v_n } is a finite subset of a vector space V over a field F (such as the real or complex numbers R or C). Then B is a basis if it satisfies the following conditions:

The numbers a_i are called the coordinates of the vector x with respect to the basis B, and by the first property they are uniquely determined.

A vector space that has a finite basis is called finite-dimensional. To deal with infinite-dimensional spaces, we must generalize the above definition to include infinite basis sets. We therefore say that a set (finite or infinite) B ⊂ V is a basis, if

The sums in the above definition are all finite because without additional structure the axioms of a vector space do not permit us to meaningfully speak about an infinite sum of vectors. Settings that permit infinite linear combinations allow alternative definitions of the basis concept: see Related notions below.

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