Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 102 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Start with the tensor product of Lie algebra representations, whose action isWriting , the two tensor factors commute, so . This verifies the Lie algebra representation identity over every field.
The exterior square and symmetric square are the quotient vector spacesIn the exterior square, expanding shows that , including in characteristic two. Both defining relation spaces are invariant under the tensor product action: is an exterior relation, and the image of a symmetric relation is a sum of symmetric relations. Thus the quotient actions are well-defined and satisfyFor the printed basis , bases are with and with . Their dimensions are and respectively.
If is invertible in , as representations. Define the flip . It commutes with the Lie algebra action and satisfies . Thereforeare complementary invariant linear projections. The mapsidentify with and with . Their inverses are the corresponding quotient maps restricted to these subspaces. This proves the assertion for every field of odd characteristic, and also for characteristic zero.
Over every field, . The symmetric square of a direct sum isomorphism sends the first two summands into products within and within , and sends to the mixed product . If and are bases, the monomial basis of is the disjoint unionThus the map is bijective, with no division by needed. The Leibniz rule for the action preserves each of these three summands and agrees with its usual Lie algebra representation action, proving equivariance.
For , is trivial and has dimension . HenceIt remains to find the irreducible representations in the symmetric square of the sl3 representation of highest weight (2,1). We give the formal character calculation explicitly.
Let be the defining special linear Lie algebra representation. In Dynkin labels, its weights are , , and ; the dual representation has their negatives. The equivariant contractionis surjective. Its kernel has dimension . The tensor is a highest-weight vector of highest weight in that kernel. By the Weyl complete reducibility theorem, the kernel contains the irreducible representation , whose Weyl dimension formula gives dimension ; therefore the kernel equals . This yieldsMultiplying the six weights of by the three weights of and subtracting those of gives the following full weight multiplicity list:The multiplicities sum to .
For any finite-dimensional weight-space decomposition, a weight of multiplicity contributes to weight in its symmetric square. Distinct weights contribute to . Equivalently,Applying this to the displayed list gives all dominant weight multiplicities in the second column below. The remaining columns are the weight multiplicities of the candidate irreducible representations:For an explicit way to compute each irreducible column, set and use the Weyl character formula in the formA monomial has Dynkin labels . Equivalently, the quotient is enumerated by Semistandard Young tableaux of shape with entries , weakly increasing across rows and strictly increasing down columns; the exponents count the three entries.
The five irreducible columns sum to the column. These are all its dominant weights, and all five candidate characters have no other dominant weights. Every Weyl group orbit meets the dominant chamber, and weight multiplicities are constant on Weyl group orbits. Thus the table proves equality of the full formal characters, and the Weyl complete reducibility theorem givesThe Weyl dimension formula checks the result:Consequently the requested decomposition isIts total dimension is .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 205 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use the normalizationThis is ridge regression; the penalty is the squared Euclidean norm. The centering removes the need for an intercept. Differentiating gives the normal equationFor every nonzero , . The coefficient matrix is therefore a positive-definite matrix, even if the design matrix has deficient matrix rank. The objective is a strictly convex function, so the unique minimizer is the closed-form ridge regression estimator, with fitted values
For the primal-dual identity for ridge regression, put and observeBoth parenthesized matrices are positive-definite matrices. Multiplying by their inverses givesThus the same fitted vector has the dual expressionNo inverse of or alone was needed. This is also the kernel-ridge hat matrix for the linear kernel.
Here a positive-definite kernel means a symmetric real-valued function whose every finite kernel matrix is positive semidefinite: for all , and ,This is the usual positive-semidefinite kernel convention; strict positivity for distinct points is not required. In particular . Write , and . Positivity of the two-point kernel matrix impliesIf , substitute to obtain . If , the affine expression can be nonnegative for every only if . Both cases give the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality for positive-semidefinite kernels:The zero-diagonal case is essential when the positive-definite kernel is not strictly positive.
To construct a feature map, let be the real vector space of finite formal linear combinations of symbols , one for each . Define a symmetric bilinear form byThe positive-definite kernel property makes this a positive semidefinite bilinear form. It need not yet be an inner product: distinct formal vectors can have zero squared length. The same quadratic-polynomial argument, now applied to , provesTherefore implies for every . The setis the radical of a bilinear form, hence a linear subspace. SetThe quotient vector space has a well-defined inner product: changing representatives by elements of changes no pairing, and a zero-length class is exactly the zero class. It is therefore an inner product space.
Define . By construction,Every positive-definite kernel thus has a feature representation, including degenerate kernels and the zero kernel. This is its canonical feature space of a positive-semidefinite kernel. The construction already gives the requested inner product space.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ib Paper 3 10F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
The symmetric bilinear form associated with a quadratic form is obtained by polarization:To diagonalize it, argue by induction on . If for every , polarization gives , so every basis works. Otherwise choose with . Thenand diagonalize the restriction to inductively. Thus some basis gives a diagonal matrix with positive, negative, and zero entries. By Sylvester's law of inertia, their counts are basis-independent. In the convention relevant here, the signature of a quadratic form is
Suppose lies in the radical of a bilinear form, so for all . Then andHence is a well-defined quadratic form on the quotient vector space . In an adapted diagonal basis, quotienting by merely removes zero diagonal directions, so and , and therefore the signature, are unchanged.
Now let . Its Gram matrix iswhich has determinant . Thus is nondegenerate and has one positive and one negative square: it is a hyperbolic plane (quadratic form) and has signature zero. Nondegeneracy gives the orthogonal direct sumSignature is additive under orthogonal direct sums, so
Put . Every two-dimensional vector subspace containing is for some . There are choices for in . Within any one such , exactly choices of yield that same : each forms a linearly independent pair with , and that pair is a basis of .
These sets of choices partition , because determines uniquely. Thus the number isEquivalently these vector subspaces correspond to the one-dimensional vector subspaces of the quotient vector space . For there are none and the formula gives zero.
Quotient Banach space Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
For a closed vector subspace of a Banach space , the quotient vector space is complete with its quotient norm. Closedness makes the quotient seminorm a norm. Completeness follows by choosing representatives of a rapidly Cauchy subsequence whose successive differences have summable norms in .
Quotient representation 2026-10-06
For a subrepresentation , the quotient vector space inherits the action. For a Lie algebra representation, the formula is , well-defined because is invariant.
Radical of a bilinear form Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
For a symmetric bilinear form or an alternating bilinear form, the radical is the linear subspaceThese vectors are invisible to all pairings, and the bilinear form is nondegenerate exactly when this linear subspace is . In coordinates, for both kinds of bilinear form, since or . Thus has radical of a bilinear form .
Passing to the quotient vector space removes precisely the invisible directions. The rule is well-defined because adding a vector in the radical of a bilinear form to either input changes no pairing, and the resulting bilinear form is nondegenerate. For , this quotient vector space retains just the direction and its form is ordinary multiplication.[ref]
https://www.math.ucla.edu/~rse/oldbook/Kniga.pdf. Elman, Karpenko and Merkurjev, The Algebraic and Geometric Theory of Quadratic Forms, §1: radical and nondegenerate quotient
For a general bilinear form, distinguish the left radical of a bilinear form from the right radical of a bilinear form; they can be different linear subspaces even though their dimensions agree in finite dimensions.
Radical of a Hermitian form Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
The radical of a Hermitian form is the vector subspace orthogonal to the entire space. The form descends to the quotient vector space by its radical: adding a radical vector to either argument does not change the value. For a positive semidefinite Hermitian form, the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality identifies this radical with its zero-norm vectors, so the quotient form is positive definite. This conclusion does not hold for a general indefinite Hermitian form: a zero-norm vector need not belong to its radical.