Linear Algebra – Are Affinely Independent Vectors Also Linearly Independent

affine-geometrylinear algebra

I am wondering about affinely independent and just linearly independent. On Wikipedia it is explained that $u_i$ are affinely independent if $u_1 – u_0, …,u_k -u_0$ are linearly independent. It is clear that if $u_i$ are linearly independent then $u_1 – u_0, …,u_k -u_0$ are linearly independent. Is the other implication not also true? Then what is the difference between the two definitions?

Best Answer

The reverse implication is not true, consider the following three vectors in $\mathbb{R}^3$: $u_0=e_1, u_1=2e_1$ and $u_2=e_1+e_2$. The three vectors are affinely independent but not linearly independent.

The best way to understand the difference is from the picture on the wikipedia page. Think of $u_0$ as the "base vertex"and all the other $u_i$ as the positions of the other vertices. $u_i-u_0$ is then the position vector of all the other vertices relative to the base vertex, and we need these to be linearly independent (so that $u_0,\dots, u_k$ are affinely independent) so that we don't end up with three collinear vertices which would mess up our idea of what a simplex should be.

It should also be noted that the point $u_0$ is not special in the definition of affine indepenence, but in fact if $u_0,\dots,u_k$ are affinely independent then for anyfor any $j$, $u_0-u_j,\dots,u_k-u_j$ are all linearly independent. Check out this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affine_space#Affine_combinations_and_affine_dependence

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