Dual space by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
The dual space of a vector space , sometimes denoted , is the vector space of all linear forms over with the obvious addition and scalar multiplication operations defined.
Since a linear form is completely determined by how it acts on a basis, and since for each basis element it is specified by a scalar, at least in finite dimension, the dimension of the dual space is the same as the , and so they are isomorphic because all vector spaces of the same dimension on a given field are isomorphic, and so the dual is quite a boring concept in the context of finite dimension.
One place where duals are different from the non-duals however is when dealing with tensors, because they transform differently than vectors from the base space .
Unlike the simple case of a matrix, in infinite dimensional vector spaces, the spectrum may be continuous.
The quintessential example of that is the spectrum of the position operator in quantum mechanics, in which any real number is a possible eigenvalue, since the particle may be found in any position. The associated eigenvectors are the corresponding Dirac delta functions.
Although quotients look a bit real number division, there are some important differences with the "group analog of multiplication" of direct product of groups.
If a group is isomorphic to the direct product of groups, we can take a quotient of the product to retrieve one of the groups, which is somewhat analogous to division: math.stackexchange.com/questions/723707/how-is-the-quotient-group-related-to-the-direct-product-group
The "converse" is not always true however: a group does not need to be isomorphic to the product of one of its normal subgroups and the associated quotient group. The wiki page provides an example:
Given G and a normal subgroup N, then G is a group extension of G/N by N. One could ask whether this extension is trivial or split; in other words, one could ask whether G is a direct product or semidirect product of N and G/N. This is a special case of the extension problem. An example where the extension is not split is as follows: Let , and which is isomorphic to Z2. Then G/N is also isomorphic to Z2. But Z2 has only the trivial automorphism, so the only semi-direct product of N and G/N is the direct product. Since Z4 is different from Z2 × Z2, we conclude that G is not a semi-direct product of N and G/N.
TODO find a less minimal but possibly more important example.
I think this might be equivalent to why the group extension problem is hard. If this relation were true, then taking the direct product would be the only way to make larger groups from normal subgroups/quotients. But it's not.
One major difference between the elliptic curve over a finite field or the elliptic curve over the rational numbers the elliptic curve over the real numbers is that not every possible generates a member of the curve.
This is because on the Equation "Definition of the elliptic curves" we see that given an , we calculate , which always produces an element .
But then we are not necessarily able to find an for the , because not all fields are not quadratically closed fields.
For example: with and , taking gives:
and therefore there is no that satisfies the equation. So is not on the curve if we consider this elliptic curve over the rational numbers.
That would also not belong to Elliptic curve over the finite field , because doing everything we have:
Therefore, there is no element such that or , i.e. and don't have a multiplicative inverse.
For the real numbers, it would work however, because the real numbers are a quadratically closed field, and .
For this reason, it is not necessarily trivial to determine the number of elements of an elliptic curve.
Discrete by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Something that is very not continuous.
Notably studied in discrete mathematics.
Derivative by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
The derivative of a function gives its slope at a point.
More precisely, it give sthe inclination of a tangent line that passes through that point.

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