 Dual pairing

The dual pairing evaluates a linear functional on a vector:It is bilinear: it is linear in each argument separately. Even over the complex numbers, this algebraic evaluation has no complex conjugation. An inner product instead has two vectors as inputs and, over the complex numbers, is sesquilinear. For $\phi (x,y)=2x-y$ and $v=(3,1)$, the dual pairing equals five. Its value is independent of the basis used to describe its two inputs.