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Linear Independence and Span

The document discusses linear independence and span of vectors. It defines span as the set of all linear combinations of a set of vectors. A set S spans a vector space V if every vector in V can be written as a linear combination of vectors in S. A set of vectors is linearly dependent if one of the vectors can be written as a linear combination of the others, otherwise it is linearly independent. The document provides examples of determining if sets of vectors span spaces and are linearly independent or dependent.

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76 views7 pages

Linear Independence and Span

The document discusses linear independence and span of vectors. It defines span as the set of all linear combinations of a set of vectors. A set S spans a vector space V if every vector in V can be written as a linear combination of vectors in S. A set of vectors is linearly dependent if one of the vectors can be written as a linear combination of the others, otherwise it is linearly independent. The document provides examples of determining if sets of vectors span spaces and are linearly independent or dependent.

Uploaded by

Hashua War
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Linear Independence and Span

Span
We have seen in the last discussion that the span of vectors v1, v2, ... , vn is the set of linear
combinations

c1v1 + c2v2 + ... + cnvn

and that this is a vector space.

We now take this idea further. If V is a vector space and S = {v1, v2, ... , vn) is a subset of V, then is
Span(S) equal to V?

Definition

Let V be a vector space and let S = {v1, v2, ... , vn) be a subset of V. We say that S spans
V if every vector v in V can be written as a linear combination of vectors in S.

v = c1v1 + c2v2 + ... + cnvn

Example

Show that the set

S = {(0,1,1), (1,0,1), (1,1,0)}

spans R3 and write the vector (2,4,8) as a linear combination of vectors in S.

Solution

A vector in R3 has the form

v = (x, y, z)

Hence we need to show that every such v can be written as

(x,y,z) = c1(0, 1, 1) + c2(1, 0, 1) + c3(1, 1, 0)


:
= (c2 + c3, c1 + c3, c1 + c2)

This corresponds to the system of equations

c2 + c3 = x
c1 + c3 = y
c1 + c2 = z

which can be written in matrix form

We can write this as

Ac = b

Notice that

det(A) = 2
Hence A is nonsingular and

c = A-1b
So that a nontrivial solution exists. To write (2,4,8) as a linear combination of vectors in S, we find
that

so that

We have
:
(2,4,8) = 5(0,1,1) + 3(1,0,1) + (-1)(1,1,0)

Example

Show that if

v1 = t + 2 and v2 = t2 + 1

and S = {v1, v2}

then

S does not span P2

Solution

A general element of P2 is of the form

v = at2 + bt + c

We set

v = c1v1 + c2v2

or

at2 + bt + c = c1(t + 2) + c2(t2 + 1) = c2t2 + c1t + c1 + c2

Equating coefficients gives

a = c2
b = c1
c = c1 + c2

Notice that if

a = 1 b = 1 c = 1

there is no solution to this. Hence S does not span V.


:
Example

Let

Find a spanning set for the null space of A.

Solution

We want the set of all vectors x with

Ax = 0

We find that the rref of A is

The parametric equations are

x1 = 7s + 6t
x2 = -4s - 5t
x3 = s
x4 = t

We can get the span in the following way. We first let

s = 1 and t = 0

to get

v1 = (7,-4,1,0)
:
and let

s = 0 and t = 1
to get

v2 = (6,-5,0,1)

If we let S = {v1,v2} then S spans the null space of A.

Linear Independence

We now know how to find out if a collection of vectors span a vector space. It should be clear that if
S = {v1, v2, ... , vn) then Span(S) is spanned by S. The question that we next ask is are there any
redundancies. That is, is there a smaller subset of S that also span Span(S). If so, then one of the
vectors can be written as a linear combination of the others.

vi = c1v1 + c2v2 + ... + ci -1vi -1 + ci+1vi+1 + ... + cnvn

If this is the case then we call S a linearly dependent set. Otherwise, we say that S is linearly
independent. There is another way of checking that a set of vectors are linearly dependent.

Theorem

Let S = {v1, v2, ... , vn) be a set of vectors, then S is linearly dependent if and only if 0 is
a nontrivial linear combination of vectors in S. That is, there are constants c1, ..., cn with at
least one of the constants nonzero with

c1v1 + c2v2 + ... + cnvn = 0

Proof

Suppose that S is linearly dependent, then

vi = c1v1 + c2v2 + ... + ci -1vi -1 + ci+1vi+1 + ... + cnvn

Subtracting vi from both sides, we get

c1v1 + c2v2 + ... + ci -1vi -1 + vi + ci+1vi+1 + ... + cnvn = 0


:
In the above equation ci = 1 which is nonzero, so that 0 is a nontrivial linear combination of vectors
in S.

Now let

c1v1 + c2v2 + ... + ci -1vi -1 + civi + ci+1vi+1 + ... + cnvn = 0

with ci nonzero. Divide both sides of the equation by ci and let aj = -cj / ci to get

-a1v1 - a2v2 - ... - ai -1vi -1 + vi - ai+1vi+1 - ... - anvn = 0

finally move all the terms to the other right side of the equation to get

vi = a1v1 + a2v2 + ... + ai -1vi -1 + ai+1vi+1 + ... + anvn

Example

Show that the set of vectors

S = {(1, 1, 3, 4), (0, 2, 3, 1), (4, 0, 0, 2)}


are linearly independent.

Solution

We write

c1(1, 1, 3, 4) + c2(0, 2, 3, 1) + c3(4, 0, 0, 2) = 0

We get four equations

c1 + 4c3 = 0
c1 + 2c2 = 0
3c1 + 3c2 = 0
4c1 + c2 + 2c3 = 0

The matrix corresponding to this homogeneous system is


:
and

Hence

c1 = c2 = c3 = 0

and we can conclude that the vectors are linearly independent.

Example

Let

S = {cos2 t, sin2 t, 4)

then S is a linearly dependent set of vectors since

4 = 4cos2t + 4sin2t

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