Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2019 / Paper 2 / 11 / a / ii / Solution

The position vectors end at the midpoints of $BC$, $CA$ and $AB$, respectively. The drawing places $E$, $F$ and $G$ on those edges and shows the arrows from the origin. The volume of their parallelepiped is the absolute scalar triple product:Equivalently, this is the absolute determinant of the matrix whose columns are the three vectors. Since it is nonzero, the vectors are linearly independent. Three linearly independent vectors in the three-dimensional vector space ${\mathbb{R}}^3$ form a basis.