Find basis of specific subspace of vector space $V = M_2(\mathbb{R})$

linear algebralinear-transformationsmatrices

Let $W$ be the subspace of vector space $V = M_2(\mathbb{R})$ consisting of the diagonal matrices in $M_2(\mathbb{R})$, where $M_2(\mathbb{R})$ denotes the set of all $2\times 2$ matrices over field $\mathbb{R}$.

My question is to find the basis of quotient space $V/W$.

Quotient space can be stated as follows:
Let $V$ be a vector space over a field $F$, and let $W$ be a subspace of $V$. The set $V /W$ is the set defined by

$V /W = \{v + W : v\in V\}$

That is, $V /W$ is the collection of cosets of $W$ in $V$. It seems to me that cosets in the given problem are sets consisting of upper and lower triangular matrices. Am i correct? How to solve this problem mathematically. What should be my approach?

Thanks

Best Answer

Hint. Let $\textsf W$ be a subspace of a finite-dimensional vector space $\textsf V$. If $\{ w_1,\dots,w_k\}$ is a basis for $\textsf W$ and $\{w_1,\dots,w_k,w_{k+1},w_{k+2}\dots,w_n\}$ an extension of this basis to a basis for the whole space $\textsf V$, then $$\{w_{k+1}+\textsf{W}, w_{k+2}+\textsf{W}, \dots, w_n+\textsf{W}\}$$ form a basis for the quotient space $\textsf{V}/\textsf{W}$.