Understanding the quotient space intuitively

linear algebralinear-transformationsquotient-spaces

A few weeks ago, I learned about quotient vector spaces but I have still problems understanding it intuitively. Let $V$ be a vector space and $U \subseteq V$ a linear subspace. Then,

$V/U := \{a + U | a \in V\} = \bigcup_{a \in V} (a + U)$

is called the quotient space. That's the definition. I get the point that the quotient space is the disjoint union of all affine subspaces of $V$, so intuitively, it shrinks down the whole vector space by identifying some elements as the "same"/equivalent, but e.g. when it comes to the quotient space $V / \ker f$ of a linear transformation, I cannot imagine the quotient space at all any more.

I already tried to compare it with residue classes, $\mathbb Z / m \mathbb Z$, $m\mathbb Z = \{mz | z \in \mathbb Z\}$ contains all multiples of $m \in \mathbb Z$, so

$\mathbb Z / m\mathbb Z = \{a + m\mathbb Z|a \in \mathbb Z\}$.

That's right, i understand $\{a + m \mathbb Z|a\in\mathbb Z\} = \{ [a]|0\leq a \leq m \}$ – that's intuitively clear for me. But when it gets more abstract, my intuition wanes.

Best Answer

I think about quotient spaces in the following way.

Let $V$ be a vector space and $W$ be a subspace. Then the vector space $V/W$ is simply the vector space $V$ in which you have killed every element of $W$. Thus, $V/W$ can be considered as the vector space $V$ with the extra rule that an element of $W$ becomes $0$.

Let's see how this intuition applies in the situation of the isomorphism theorem.

Let $T: V \to V'$ be a linear map. The isomorphism theorem tells us that

$$V/ \ker T \cong \operatorname{Im} T.$$

Why do we intuitively expect this? Well, $V/\ker T$ is the vector space $V$ in which we kill the kernel, i.e. an element of the kernel becomes $0$ in our vector space. So basically this means that our map becomes injective! Thus, we get an isomorphism on the image (injection on the image of a map is bijective).

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