For , define by . If , then in particular
so . Thus is injective. Since a finite-dimensional vector space and its dual space have the same dimension, is also surjective and hence an isomorphism. This is the finite-dimensional real case of the Riesz representation theorem.
The adjoint operator of is the unique linear map satisfying
for every and . In the stated orthonormal bases, if and denote coordinate columns, then
Therefore the matrix of is the matrix transpose .
For ,
Hence . Taking orthogonal complements in the finite-dimensional space proves the image-kernel orthogonality for an adjoint
Put . For any ,
This is minimized at exactly when , equivalently when . Thus the normal equation for a linear inverse problem is
For the given linear least-squares problem,
The normal equations and have the unique solution