Exercise 1898Linear algebra › Vector spaces and subspacesL1Added 3 Nov 2026
Existence of a supplementary subspace
#supplementary subspace#basis extension#existence
Statement
Let be a subspace of a finite-dimensional vector space . Show that there exists a subspace of such that .
Hint
Take a basis of , extend it to a basis of , and let be the span of the added vectors.
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Solution
Basis extension. Let be a basis of . By the incomplete basis theorem, it extends to a basis of .
Define . Let .
Direct sum. Any is a combination of the full basis, hence with and . If , then is a combination of the for and of the for ; by uniqueness of coordinates in the basis, all coefficients are zero, so .
Conclusion. . Any subspace has at least one supplementary subspace.