Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 ib Paper 1 1G 2 Solution 2026-10-14
Choose and write using the direct sum of vector spaces . Neither component is zero: otherwise would lie in one of the zero intersections or . They are linearly independent, so is a two-dimensional vector subspace. Uniqueness of the direct-sum decomposition gives and . Also , but cannot be contained in because . Hence is one-dimensional. This constructs the required common plane for three pairwise complementary subspaces.