Affine hull ($\mathrm{aff}(S)=a+\mathrm{span}\{s-a:s\in S\}$)

The smallest affine subspace containing a nonempty set $S$. For any chosen $a\in S$, the displayed formula proves existence and minimality: every containing affine subspace must contain all the indicated differences in its direction space. Equivalently it consists of finite affine combinations ${\sum }_i{\lambda }_i{s}_i$ with ${\sum }_i{\lambda }_i=1$. Its dimension can be smaller than the dimension of an affine hyperplane in which the set has been embedded.