EE547: Fall 2018

Lecture 2: Fields, Rings, Vector Spaces Oh My!. . .

Lecturer: L.J. Ratliff

Disclaimer: These notes have not been subjected to the usual scrutiny reserved for formal publications.
They may be distributed outside this class only with the permission of the Instructor.

2.1 Fields and Rings

Definition 2.1. A field F is an object consisting of a set of elements and two binary operations
1. addition (+)
2. multiplication (·)
such that the following axioms are obeyed:
• Addition is:
– associative: (α + β) + γ = α + (β + γ), ∀α, β, γ ∈ F
– commutative: α + β = β + α
– ∃ identity element 0 s.t. α + 0 = α
– ∃ inverse: ∀α ∈ F , ∃(−α) ∈ F s.t. α + (−α) = 0
• Multiplication is:
– associative
– commutative
– ∃ identity 1 s.t. α · 1 = α
– ∃ inverse: ∀α 6= 0, ∃α−1 s.t. α · α−1 = α−1 · α = 1
– distributive (over (+)):

α · (β + γ) = α·β+α·γ
(β + γ) · α = β·α+γ·α

2-1
2-2 Lecture 2: Fields, Rings, Vector Spaces Oh My!. . .

DIY Exercise. Show that

• the polynomials in s w/ coefficients in R (denoted by R[s]) is not a field
• strictly proper rational functions, denoted by Rp,o (s) is not a field
Definition 2.2 (Ring). A ring is the same as a field except the multiplication operator is not commutative
and there is no inverse for non-zero elements under the multiplication operator.

DIY Exercise. Show that the set {0, 1} with

• (·) = binary AND
• (+) = binary XOR
is a field.

2.2 Vector Spaces (or Linear Spaces)

A vector space (V, F ) is a set of vectors V , and a field of scalars F , and two binary operations:
• vector addition ’+’
• scalar multiplication ’·’ (multiplication of vectors by scalars)
such that
– addition. is associative, commutative, ∃ identity element, ∃ inverse element
– scalar multiplication. distributes, ∃ multiplicative and additive identities
Lecture 2: Fields, Rings, Vector Spaces Oh My!. . . 2-3

Examples.
1. (F n , F ) the space of n-tuples in F over the field F is a vector space. (i.e. (Rn , R), (Cn , C))

2.3 Vector subspaces (or linear subspaces)

Let (V, F ) be a linear space and W a subset of V (denoted W ⊂ V ). Then (W, F ) is called a subspace of
(V, F ) if (W, F ) is itself a vector space.

How to check if something is a subspace?

step 1. verify that W is a subset of V (thus W inherits the vector space axioms of V )
step 2. verify closure under vector addition and scalar multiplication—i.e. ∀w1 , w2 ∈ W , ∀α ∈ F ,

αw1 + αw2 ∈ W

This is equivalent to. . .

Defn. A subspace V of W is a subset of W such that
1. 0 ∈ V
2. u, v ∈ V =⇒ u + v ∈ V
3. u ∈ V , α ∈ R =⇒ αu ∈ V
Examples.
• a plane in R3 is a subspace
• Prove that if W1 , W2 are subspaces of V , then
i) W1 ∩ W2 is a subspace
ii) W1 ∪ W2 is not necessarily a subspace

Q. is the unit circle S ∈ R1 a subspace?

Definition 2.3. If (V, F ) has a basis of n elements, then (V, F ) is said to be finite dimensional (i.e. dim(V ) =
n). Otherwise, it is said to be infinite dimensional.

e.g.,
1. (Rn×n , R), the space of n × n real valued matrices, has dimension n2 .
2. PC([0, 1], R) is infinite dimensional. Indeed, this can be shown by showing it contains a subspace of infinite
dimension: span{(t → tn )∞ 0 }.
2-4 Lecture 2: Fields, Rings, Vector Spaces Oh My!. . .

2.4 Linear Independence and Dependence

Suppose (V, F ) is a linear space.

• The set of vectors {v1 , v2 , . . . , vp }, vi ∈ V is said to be linear independent if and only if (iff)

α1 v1 + α2 v2 + · · · + αp vp = 0 =⇒ α1 = α2 = · · · αp = 0

where αi ∈ F .
• The set of vectors is said to be linear dependent iff ∃ scalars α1 , α2 , . . . , αp ∈ F not all zero such that

α1 v1 + α2 v2 + · · · + αp vp = 0

Example. Let F = R, k ∈ {0, 1, 2, . . .}, fk : [−1, 1] → R such that fk (t) = tk . Show that the set of vectors
(fk )k=0,...,n is linearly independent in (F ([−1, 1], R), F ).

proof sketch.
(fk )n0 = {f0 , f1 , . . . , fn }
Hence we need to show that

α0 + α1 t + α2 t2 + · · · + αn tn = 0 =⇒ αi = 0, αi ∈ R ∀ t ∈ [−1, 1]

DIY Exercise. hint: above has to hold for all t!

2.5 Basis and Coordinate Representation

Suppose (V, F ) is a linear space. Then a set of vectors B = {b1 , b2 , . . . , bn } is called a basis of V if
1. {b1 , b2 , . . . , bn } spans V
2. {b1 , b2 , . . . , bn } is a linearly independent set.
Any vector x ∈ V may be written as a linear combination of the basis vectors.
e.g.,
n
X
x = ξ1 b1 + ξ2 b2 + · · · ξn bn = ξi bi
i=1

and hence  
ξ1
 .. 
ξ =  .  ∈ Fn
ξn
is called the coordinate vector of x wrt {bi }ni=1 . The ξi ’s are called the coordinates of x wrt {bi }ni=1 .

Using linear combinations we can generate subspaces, as follows. Recall the notion of span:

Definition 2.4. The span of a set of vectors B is defined to be the intersection of all subspaces of V that
contain S.
alt. the span of B is the set of all finite linear combinations of elements of B:
( n )
X 
span(B) = ξi bi  bi ∈ B, ξi ∈ F

i=1
Lecture 2: Fields, Rings, Vector Spaces Oh My!. . . 2-5

Fact. For a non-empty subset S of Rn , show that span(S) is always a subspace of Rn .

proof DIY Exercise.

Let V = span(S) be the subspace of Rn spanned by some S ⊆ Rn . Then S is said to generate or span V ,
and to be a generating or spanning set for V .
Note. If V is already known to be a subspace, then finding a spanning set S for V can be useful, because it
is often easier to work with the smaller spanning set than with the entire subspace V , e.g., if we are trying
to understand the behavior of linear transformations on V .
Claim. Given a linear combination,
n
X
x = ξ1 b1 + ξ2 b2 + · · · ξn bn = ξi bi ,
i=1

the ξi ’s are uniquely defined in terms of x and the {bi }ni=1 .

Definition 2.5. if {b1 , b2 , . . . , bn } is a basis for (V, F ), then any other basis also has n elements. The number
of elements in the basis is called the dimension of the vector space.

Fact. A basis of a vector space is NOT unique. can you come up with an example in R3 ?

2.5.1 Simple Examples

Let’s do some simple examples.

Sometimes the coefficients of a vector with respect to a basis are call coordinates. That is, coordinates of a
vector
v = (α1 , α2 , . . . , αn ) ∈ Rn
2-6 Lecture 2: Fields, Rings, Vector Spaces Oh My!. . .

relative to the standard basis

e1 = (1, 0, . . . , 0, 0), e2 = (0, 1, . . . , 0, 0), . . . , en = (0, 0, . . . , 0, 1)

are
(α1 , α2 , . . . , αn )
e.g., in R2 , the coefficients w.r.t. the standard basis literally tell you the coordinates

v = (α1 , α2 )
α2

α1

Key: Just like writing v wrt the standard basis, we can represent a vector v in any of basis by finding its
coordinates via a transformation.

Example. Consider vectors u1 = (2, 1) and u2 = (3, 1). These vectors form a basis for R2 .
1. Can you show that these vectors form a basis?

2. Find coordinates of the vector v = (7, 4) with respect to the basis {u1 , u2 }.
Lecture 2: Fields, Rings, Vector Spaces Oh My!. . . 2-7

3. Find the vector w whose coordinates with respect to the basis u1 , u2 are (7, 4).

4. (change of coordinates). Given a vector v ∈ R2 , let (x, y) be its standard coordinates—i.e., coordinates
with respect to the standard basis e1 = (1, 0), e2 = (0, 1), and let (α, β) be its coordinates with respect
to the basis u1 = (2, 1), u2 = (3, 1). Find a relation between (x, y) and (α, β).

What is the generalization of this?