MAST10008 Accelerated Mathematics 1 Version 2

Tutorial 8: Orthogonality

Q1. Show that in every inner product space: v + w is orthogonal to v − w if and only if kvk = kwk. Give
a geometric interpretation of this result.

Q2. Let W be the subspace of R4 spanned by the vectors

1 1
u1 = (1, −1, 1, 1), u2 = (−1, 1, 1, 1).
2 2
(a) Check that {u1 , u2 } is orthonormal with respect to the dot product on R4 .
(b) Let w = (−1, 1, 5, 5) ∈ W . Using the fact that {u1 , u2 } are orthonormal, express w as a linear
combination of u1 and u2 .
(c) Let v = (−1, 1, 3, 5) ∈ R4 . Use

projW (v) = α1 u1 + α2 u2 where αi = hv, ui i = v · ui

to find the orthogonal projection of v onto W .

Q3. Use the Gram–Schmidt procedure to make {(1, 0), (0, 1)} into an orthonormal basis for R2 with respect
to the inner product
hx, yi = 2x1 y1 − x1 y2 − x2 y1 + x2 y2 ,
where x = (x1 , x2 ) and y = (y1 , y2 ).

Q4. Let C[0, π] be the vector space of real valued functions that are continuous on the interval [0, π] with
the inner product Z π
hf, gi = f (x)g(x) dx.
0
Obtain an orthonormal basis for the span of {1, cos x, sin x} using the Gram–Schmidt process.

Q5. A grocery store takes delivery of stock and records sales from this day. At the end of business on day
x, the number of packets y of a certain brand of cereal remaining on the shelf were recorded to give
the following data
x 1 2 3
y 14 10 10

(a) Compute the least squares line of best fit to this data.
(b) Use your answer to (a) to estimate the number of days before the product runs out.

Q6. First draw the effect of the linear transformation on the square with corners (0, 0), (0, 1), (1, 0), (1, 1),
and then find its standard matrix representation:

(a) R = rotation anticlockwise around the origin by π/4,

(b) M = reflection in the line y = −x.

Mathematics and Statistics 1 University of Melbourne