[Math] Proof that $\dim\big(\mathcal{L}(V,W)\big)=\dim V *\dim W$, when $V, W$ are finite dimensional.

linear algebra

I've been looking a few proofs of this, and I have a problem with the standard one, which uses the concept of isomorphism. Suppose $\dim V=n$ and $\dim W=M$. The proof uses the function $M$ from $\mathcal{L}(V,W)$ (the linear maps from $V$ to $W$), to $\text{Mat}_{m\times n}(F)$ (matrices of $m\times n$), which assigns to each linear map $T$ it's matrix $M(T)$. To do this, they fix first some basis $(v_1,….v_n)$ of $V$ and $(w_1,…w_m)$ of $W$. My problem is this fixing of the basis. Because then the function $M$ is not a function, at least not from $L(V,W)$, because each linear map has many matrices depending of the basis. How can we then state that $\dim\big(\mathcal{L}(V,W)\big)=(\dim V)(\dim W)$ ?

Best Answer

A more conceptual proof:

Le $\mathcal B$ a basis of $V$. By definition of a basis, we have an isomorphism $L(V,W)\simeq W^\mathcal B$, so $$\dim(L(V,W))=\dim(W^\mathcal B)=\lvert\mathcal B\rvert\cdot \dim W =\dim V\cdot \dim W.$$