How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
Assuming the Axiom of Choice, has a Hamel basis over : there is such that every real is a finite -linear combination of elements of in exactly one way, and each basis vector carries a well-defined -linear coefficient map
Statement
Assume the Axiom of Choice (The Axiom of Choice). The hypothesis is genuinely used: it enters through Every vector space has a basis, whose own Statement begins "Assume the Axiom of Choice", and which rests on Zorn's lemma.
Write for the canonical copy of the rationals inside (The rationals embed densely in the reals). Then is a subfield of (Subfield: a subring of a field closed under inverses of its nonzero elements, and therefore a field with the restricted operations) and is a vector space over by restriction of scalars (A field is a vector space over itself, and over any subfield every -vector space is a -vector space by restricting the scalars, Vector space over a field); all spans, linear independence and bases below are taken in that structure. Then:
- Existence. has a basis over (Basis of a vector space: a linearly independent spanning subset; and ordered basis: an injective finite list whose image is a basis), called a Hamel basis.
- Representation. Every real is for some , some injective list (Injection, surjection, bijection) and some (Linear combination of a finite list, and the span as the smallest linear subspace containing ).
- Uniqueness along a list. For a fixed and a fixed injective , if satisfy , then for every .
- The coefficient map of a basis vector. Fix and put . Every real is with and in exactly one way. Writing for that unique scalar, the map satisfies its range is the whole of , and .
- The complement is not trivial. for every .
Claim 2 together with claim 4 is the precise content of the phrase "in exactly one way" in the title: a real is a finite -combination of basis vectors, and the coefficient attached to each single basis vector is determined by the real alone.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: The field , the canonical copy of the rationals, and the Axiom of Choice.
The Axiom of Choice, used only through [L4] (The Axiom of Choice, Zorn's lemma).
The map is an embedding of ordered fields of into (The rationals embed densely in the reals); a subfield is a subset containing , closed under and , and containing for each nonzero in it (Subfield: a subring of a field closed under inverses of its nonzero elements, and therefore a field with the restricted operations, Field, Complete ordered field (least-upper-bound property)).
A field is a vector space over itself, and an -vector space is a -vector space for every subfield by restricting the scalars (A field is a vector space over itself, and over any subfield every -vector space is a -vector space by restricting the scalars, Vector space over a field).
is the smallest linear subspace containing ; it is extensive, monotone and idempotent; , and for the scalar in is determined (Linear combination of a finite list, and the span as the smallest linear subspace containing , Linear subspace of a vector space, The span is monotone and idempotent, exactly when is a linear subspace, and , , which is when , and when contains only as the multiple ).
Assume the Axiom of Choice. Then every vector space over every field has a basis, that is a linearly independent spanning subset (Every vector space has a basis, Basis of a vector space: a linearly independent spanning subset; and ordered basis: an injective finite list whose image is a basis, Linear independence: a finite list is independent when forces every , and a subset is independent when every injective finite list into is independent).
For : is linearly dependent if and only if some lies in ; and is already the set of linear combinations of injective finite lists into (A subset is linearly dependent if and only if some lies in ; and is already the set of linear combinations of INJECTIVE finite lists into , claims 1 and 2, is exactly the set of linear combinations of finite lists of elements of , and ).
A finite list is an ordered basis of if and only if every is for exactly one ; an ordered basis is an injective list whose image is a basis; and for a linear subspace and the readings of " is linearly independent" and " is a basis" computed in and in agree (A finite list is an ordered basis if and only if every equals for exactly one ; those scalars are the coordinates of in that ordered basis, Basis of a vector space: a linearly independent spanning subset; and ordered basis: an injective finite list whose image is a basis, The natural numbers (von Neumann)).
For finitely many linear subspaces, ; and if and only if every is with in exactly one way, which for reads (, so the sum is the smallest linear subspace containing every , The sum of two linear subspaces and the sum of a finite family, Internal direct sum : the sum is everything and each summand meets the sum of the others only in , if and only if every is with in exactly one way; equivalently, if and only if the sum is and with forces every ).
and is uncountable; a nonempty at most countable set is the image of a surjection from , and the image of a surjection from is at most countable ( is countably infinite, is uncountable (Cantor's nested intervals, 1874), A nonempty set is at most countable iff it is a surjective image of , Finite, countably infinite, countable, uncountable).
Proof
is a subfield of : it contains ; it is closed under differences and products, since and ; and if then and lies in it.
is a vector space over itself, so restricting the scalars to the subfield makes a vector space over , with the field addition as vector addition and the field multiplication restricted to as scalar multiplication.
Claim 1: assuming the Axiom of Choice, that vector space has a basis , a linearly independent subset of with .
Claim 2: since and the span of a set is already the set of linear combinations of injective finite lists into it, every real is with injective and .
Claim 3: let be injective and put , a linear subspace of . The list is linearly independent, since is a linearly independent subset and is an injective finite list into ; its image spans by construction, so is a basis of and is an ordered basis of , independence and spanning being the same conditions read in as in .
Fix and put and , both linear subspaces of .
With and as in step 4.2, the coordinate theorem applied to the vector space says that every is for exactly one ; in particular forces , which is claim 3.
. Indeed ; the set is contained in , since and by extensiveness of the span, so by monotonicity; and , again by monotonicity, so by idempotence.
and . If lay in then would be linearly dependent, contrary to step 3.1; and would likewise make dependent, since , every span containing the zero vector.
. Let and write with . If then , because is a linear subspace and , contradicting step 5.3; so and .
Hence : condition (D1) is step 5.2, and condition (D2) is step 6.1, since for the two-member family the sum of the other summands is in the one case and in the other. By the direct-sum criterion every real is with and in exactly one way.
Writing , the scalar is determined by , since ; so is a well-defined map , and with in exactly one way.
is additive and -homogeneous: if and with , then with , and with for , both because is a linear subspace; uniqueness in step 8.1 then identifies the coefficients.
, from the representation ; the range of is all of , since for every ; and holds exactly when . Claim 4 is proved.
Claim 5: if then step 8.1 gives . That set is the image of under , and is the image of a surjection from , so composing gives a surjection from onto and would be at most countable, contradicting its uncountability. So .
Remarks
- How this differs from as a vector space over has a basis, and every such basis is infinite; the existence proof exhibits none, exactly. That item, homed on the examples page of Linear independence, bases and dimension, proves three things: that is a vector space over the canonical copy of , that it has a basis there, and that every such basis is infinite, together with the observation that the existence proof exhibits none. The present lemma proves the first two and does not prove the third: nothing above says that a Hamel basis is infinite. What it adds instead is claims 2 to 5 — the representation by injective lists, uniqueness of the coefficients along a list, the coefficient map of a single basis vector with its kernel, and the fact that — none of which appears there. So neither statement contains the other, and they are not the same statement.
The duplication of the two shared clauses is deliberate. An examples page is a leaf of this library and nothing outside it may depend on an item homed there, so a citable Hamel basis had to be built on a page that is not a leaf. The proofs of those clauses are the same proof, and no originality is claimed for them.
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Where the choice is spent. Once, in Every vector space has a basis, which runs through Zorn's lemma. Everything after step 3.1 is elementary linear algebra over an arbitrary field, applied to over . Nothing here exhibits a Hamel basis, and nothing here claims that none can be exhibited; that would be an assertion about definability, and this library has established nothing of the kind.
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The coefficient map is the source of the pathology. is additive (Cauchy's functional equation , and the additive functions ) and takes only rational values, so it is not of the form ; that is the whole of FALSE: every additive is of the form for a single real , and the companion page reads off from it a function unbounded on every interval, with dense graph and dense level sets.
Depends on
- Vector space over a field
- A field is a vector space over itself, and over any subfield $K \subseteq F$ every $F$-vector space is a $K$-vector space by restricting the scalars
- Subfield: a subring of a field closed under inverses of its nonzero elements, and therefore a field with the restricted operations
- Linear combination of a finite list, and the span $\operatorname{span}(S)$ as the smallest linear subspace containing $S$
- $\operatorname{span}(S)$ is exactly the set of linear combinations of finite lists of elements of $S$, and $\operatorname{span}(\varnothing) = \{0_V\}$
- A subset $S \subseteq V$ is linearly dependent if and only if some $s \in S$ lies in $\operatorname{span}(S \setminus \{s\})$; and $\operatorname{span}(S)$ is already the set of linear combinations of INJECTIVE finite lists into $S$
- The span is monotone and idempotent, $\operatorname{span}(S) = S$ exactly when $S$ is a linear subspace, and $\operatorname{span}(S \cup \{0_V\}) = \operatorname{span}(S)$
- $\operatorname{span}\{v\} = \{\, \lambda v : \lambda \in F \,\}$, which is $\{0_V\}$ when $v = 0_V$, and when $v \ne 0_V$ contains $0_V$ only as the multiple $0_F v$
- $\sum_{i<n} U_i = \operatorname{span}\bigl(\bigcup_{i<n} U_i\bigr)$, so the sum is the smallest linear subspace containing every $U_i$
- The sum $U + W$ of two linear subspaces and the sum $\sum_{i<n} U_i$ of a finite family
- Internal direct sum $V = \bigoplus_{i<n} U_i$: the sum is everything and each summand meets the sum of the others only in $0_V$
- $V = \bigoplus_{i<n} U_i$ if and only if every $v \in V$ is $\sum_{i<n} u_i$ with $u_i \in U_i$ in exactly one way; equivalently, if and only if the sum is $V$ and $\sum_{i<n} u_i = 0_V$ with $u_i \in U_i$ forces every $u_i = 0_V$
- Linear subspace of a vector space
- Linear independence: a finite list $v : n \to V$ is independent when $\sum_{i<n} \lambda_i v_i = 0_V$ forces every $\lambda_i = 0_F$, and a subset $S \subseteq V$ is independent when every injective finite list into $S$ is independent
- Basis of a vector space: a linearly independent spanning subset; and ordered basis: an injective finite list whose image is a basis
- Every vector space has a basis
- A finite list $v : n \to V$ is an ordered basis if and only if every $x \in V$ equals $\sum_{i<n} \lambda_i v_i$ for exactly one $\lambda : n \to F$; those scalars are the coordinates of $x$ in that ordered basis
- The Axiom of Choice
- Zorn's lemma
- The rationals embed densely in the reals
- $\mathbb{Q}$ is countably infinite
- $\mathbb{R}$ is uncountable (Cantor's nested intervals, 1874)
- A nonempty set is at most countable iff it is a surjective image of $\mathbb{N}$
- Finite, countably infinite, countable, uncountable
- Field
- Complete ordered field (least-upper-bound property)
- Injection, surjection, bijection
- The natural numbers $\mathbb{N}$ (von Neumann)
Used by
- Assuming Choice, a Hamel coefficient map is midpoint convex but discontinuous and therefore not convex Counterexample
- A bounded function on ℝ with no local maximum and no local minimum at any point, upper semicontinuous at no point and lower semicontinuous at no point: compose the Hamel coefficient with a strictly increasing injection of ℝ into (0,1) Example
- An additive f : ℝ → ℝ that is not x ↦ cx: the coefficient of one fixed Hamel basis vector. It is unbounded above and below on every nondegenerate interval, its graph is dense in ℝ², and every nonempty level set is dense in ℝ Example
- FALSE: every additive f : ℝ → ℝ is of the form x ↦ cx for a single real c False statement
- Convexity conventions, endpoint scope, dyadic approximation, and the exact use of the Axiom of Choice in the midpoint-convex counterexample Remark
Dependency tree · next 3 levels
Direct dependencies and their dependencies through the next three levels: 163 results over 31 levels. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, and this result sits at the bottom with a heavier outline. Click the chart to enlarge it.
Sources
- Hamel basis, in Basis (linear algebra) (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)
- Axiom of choice (Wikipedia) (standard reference, not scraped)
- Hamel Basis (MathWorld) (standard reference, not scraped)