Date: 13th September 2024.
MTH 201: QUIZ I
Instructions:
1. Please think carefully before writing your answer, and write clearly.
2. N is the system of natural numbers, Z is the set of integers, Q is the set of rational
numbers, R is the set of real numbers, C is the set of complex numbers.
Questions
1. Give a real number which is not a rational number. Is Q × Q a vector subspace of
R2 ? Justify your answers in less than 10 statements. [2 marks]
√
Answer:
√ 6 is a real number which is not a rational number.
If 6 is a rational number then, by definition of rational numbers, there exist a ∈
Z, b ∈ N such that
√ a
6 = and greatest common divisor of a and b is 1.
b
Squaring both the sides and simplifying gives
6b2 = a2 .
Since 3 divides left side, we obtain that 3 divides a2 . Since 3 is a prime number, we
obtain that 3 divides a. Consequently, 9 divides a2 . Hence 9|6b2 . This gives 3|b2 .
As 3 is a prime number, we get 3|b. Thus 3 divides the greatest common divisor of
a and b. This is a contradiction.
√
Q × Q is not a vector subspace of R2 . Because (1, 0) ∈ Q × Q and 6 ∈ R but
√ √
6.(1, 0) = ( 6, 0) 6∈ Q × Q.
2. Suppose A is a matrix of order n × n. In how many steps you can definitely
compute A3 ? Each time you perform addition or multiplication it constitutes one
step. [2 marks]
Answer: In 4n3 −2n2 steps we can definitely evaluate A3 using definition of matrix
multiplication.
Try to match the answer for n = 2 and n = 3 by taking some example.
3. Let W be a subspace of R4 and u1 , . . . , um be a basis of W . With this informa-
tion, list out all possible values of m. [2 marks]
1
2 MTH 201: QUIZ I
Answer: The possible values of m are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4.
Remark: By convention basis of the trivial subspace {(0, 0, 0, 0)} is empty set.
Empty set has zero elements. Since you may not know this, I will consider the list
1, 2, 3, 4 also as a correct answer.
4. Give a subspace of R4 in which any three elements are linearly dependent but
there can be two linearly independent elements. Write justification in less than 10
sentences. How Many two dimensional subspaces R5 has? [1+2+1 marks]
Answer : Let W = {(x, y, 0, 0)|x, y ∈ R}. Then e1 = (1, 0, 0, 0), e2 = (0, 1, 0, 0)
are linearly independent elements of W . Because if a, b are real numbers such that
a.e1 + b.e2 = (0, 0, 0, 0) then by definition of scalar multiplication, vector addition
and equality of R4 we get a = b = 0.
On the other hand suppose u1 = (x1 , y1 , 0, 0), u2 = (x2 , y2 , 0, 0), u3 = (x3 , y3 , 0, 0)
are any three elements in W . Then we consider the following elements v1 =
(x1 , y1 ), v2 = (x2 , y2 ), v3 = (x3 , y3 ) of R2 . It was proved in the class that any three
vectors in R2 are linearly dependent. Thus there exist real number r, s, t such that
r.v1 + s.v2 + t.v3 = (0, 0) and atleast one of r, s, t is non-zero.
We easily see that
r.u1 + s.u2 + t.u3 = (0, 0, 0, 0).
This shows that u1 , u2 , u3 are linearly independent.
There are infinitely many two dimensional subspaces of R5 .
