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For the basis $v_j=e_1+\cdots +e_j$ obtained from a basis $e_1,\dots ,e_n$, the dual basis is obtained by successive differences of the original dual basis. Indeed, if $x={\sum }_j{c}_j{v}_j$, its original coordinates are $x_i={\sum }_{j\ge i}{c}_j$. Hence $c_i=x_i-x_{i+1}$ for $i<n$, and $c_n=x_n$. These are precisely the new coordinate linear functionals. This gives an elementary example of the inverse relation between change of basis and covector transformation under a change of basis.

The dual space of a vector space $V$ over a field $F$ is the vector space of all linear functionals $\phi :V\to F$. Think of a vector as an input and a linear functional as a scalar-valued measurement of that input. For $V={\mathbb{R}}^2$, the rules $(x,y)\mapsto x$, $(x,y)\mapsto y$, and $(x,y)\mapsto 2x-y$ are different elements of the dual space. None needs a notion of length or angle.

Its operations combine measurements pointwise:The dual basis explains the finite-dimensional structure: specifying a linear functional's values on a basis determines its value on every vector. Thus an $n$-dimensional vector space has an $n$-dimensional dual space. The spaces have the same dimension, but their elements play different roles: an input and a rule that measures an input. ^[ref].

This separation is useful when changing coordinates. The dual pairing $\phi (v)$ must stay the same while the component lists for $v$ and $\phi$ change in opposite ways. Covector transformation under a change of basis makes the compensation explicit. An inner product on a finite-dimensional real vector space gives one way to represent each linear functional by a vector, but that representation uses the chosen inner product; the dual space itself does not require one.

Here dual space means the algebraic dual: all linear functionals. For a topological vector space, the continuous dual space keeps only the continuous linear functionals. In infinite dimension, this can be a proper vector subspace; discontinuous functional detected by vanishing sequence tails gives an example. The distinction matters when a scalar-valued measurement must respond continuously to small input changes.