Change of basis

where:

The change of basis matrix $C$ is the matrix that allows us to express the new basis in an old basis:

Mnemonic is as follows: consider we have an initial basis $(x_{old},y_{old})$. Now, we define the new basis in terms of the old basis, e.g.:which can be written in matrix form as:and so if we set:we have:

The usual question then is: given a vector in the new basis, how do we represent it in the old basis?

The answer is that we simply have to calculate the matrix inverse of $M$:

That $M^{-1}$ is the matrix inverse.

When we have a symmetric matrix, a change of basis keeps symmetry iff it is done by an orthogonal matrix, in which case: