By the end of this section, you should be able to give precise and thorough answers to the questions listed below. You may want to keep these questions in mind to focus your thoughts as you complete the section.
How do we find the coordinate vector of a vector with respect to a basis ?
Consider a planet orbiting the sun (or an object like a satellite orbiting the Earth). According to Kepler's Laws, we assume an elliptical orbit. There are many different ways to describe this orbit, and which description we use depends on our perspective and the application. One important perspective is to make the description of the orbit as simple as possible for earth-based observations. Two problems arise. One is that the earth's orbit and the orbit of the planet do not lie in the same plane. A second problem is that it is complicated to describe the orbit of a planet using the perspective of the plane of the earth's orbit. A reasonable approach, then, is to establish two different coordinate systems, one for the earth's orbit and one for the planet's orbit. We can then use a change of basis to move back and forth from these two perspectives.
In this section we will investigate how a basis in provides a coordinate system in which each vector in has a unique set of coordinates. In this way, each basis will provide us with a new perspective to visualize . Then we will see how coordinate vectors can allow us to find change of basis matrices that we can use to easily switch between coordinate systems. We begin our analysis of coordinate systems by looking at how a basis in gives us a different view of .
In part (2) we were given the weights ( and 2) of the linear combination of and that produced . We call the vector the coordinate vector of with respect to the basis . Explain why any vector in can be written as a linear combination of vectors . This shows that each vector in has a coordinate vector in the coordinate system defined by and .
Since is a basis for , any vector in has a coordinate vector in the coordinate system defined by and . But we also need to make sure that each vector has a unique coordinate vector. Explain why there is no vector in which has two different coordinate vectors.
We can think of the vectors and as defining a coordinate system, with Span as the “” -axis and Span as the “” -axis. Any vector in can be written uniquely in the form
and the weights serve as the coordinates of in the , coordinate system. In this case the coordinate vector of with respect to the basis is written as . Let .
Bases are useful for many reasons. A basis provides us with a unique representation of the elements in as linear combinations of the basis vectors in the coordinate system defined by the vectors.
As we saw in Preview Activity 16.1, we can think of a basis of as determining a coordinate system of . For example, let where and . The vector can be written as .Figure 16.2 shows that if we plot the point that is units in the direction (where a “unit” is a copy of ) and units in the direction, then the result is the vector from the origin to point defined by .
As discussed in Preview Activity 16.1, we can think of the vectors and as defining a coordinate system, with Span as the “” -axis and Span as the “” -axis. Since is a basis, any vector in can be written uniquely in the form
and the weights serve as the coordinates of in the , coordinate system. We call the vector the coordinate vector of with respect to the basis and write this vector as .
This is actually a familiar idea, one we have used for years. The standard coordinates of a vector in are just the coordinates of with respect to the standard basis of .
Recall that there is exactly one way to write a vector as a linear combination of basis vectors, so there is only one coordinate vector of a given vector with respect to a basis. Therefore, the coordinate vector of any vector with respect to a basis is well-defined.
Until now we have listed a basis as a set without regard to the order in which the basis elements are written. That is, the set is the same as the set . Notice, however, that if we change the order of the vectors in our basis, say from to , then the coordinate vector of with respect to will be different. To avoid this problem, when discussing coordinate vectors we will consider our bases to be ordered bases, so that the order in which we write the elements in our basis is fixed. So, for example, the ordered basis is different than the ordered basis .
In calculus we change coordinates, from rectangular to polar, for example, to make certain calculations easier. In order for us to be able to work effectively in different coordinate systems, and to easily change back and forth as needed, we will want to have a way to effectively transition from one coordinate system to another. In other words, if we have two different bases for , we want a straightforward way to translate between the coordinate vectors of any given vector in with respect to the two bases.
Since is also a basis for , there is also a coordinate vector for with respect to , and it is reasonable to ask how is related to . Recall that coordinate vectors respect linear combinations — that is
for any vectors and in with basis , and any scalars and . Use the fact that and the linearity of the coordinate transformation with respect to the basis to express in terms of and (don't actually calculate and yet, just leave your result in terms of the symbols and .)
The matrix that we constructed in problem (1) allows us to quickly and easily switch from coordinates with respect to a basis to coordinates with respect to another basis , providing a way to effectively transition from one coordinate system to another as described in the introduction. This matrix is called a change of basis matrix. In problem (1) we explained why the change of basis matrix exists, and in this problem we will see another perspective from which to view this matrix. Let and be two bases for (not the specific bases we used earlier in this activity, but any bases). The change of basis matrix from to has the property that for every vector in . We can determine the entries of by applying this formula to specific vectors in .
If is an matrix and ,,, are the standard unit vectors in (that is, is the th column of the identity matrix), then what does the product tell us about the matrix ?
Suppose we have two different finite bases and for . In Activity 16.4 we learned how to translate between the two bases in the 2-dimensional case — if and , then the change of basis matrix from to is the matrix . This result in the 2-dimensional case generalizes to the -dimensional case, and we can determine a straightforward method for calculating a change of basis matrix. The essential idea was introduced in Activity 16.4.
The change of basis matrix allows us to convert from coordinates with respect to one basis to coordinates with respect to another. The result is summarized in the following theorem.
One way to find a change of basis matrix is to utilize a basis in which computations are straightforward. The following activity illustrates the process.
where is any basis for . So to find these weights, we choose a convenient basis (often the standard basis, if one exists, is a good choice) and then row reduce the matrix
In particular, if we use the standard basis for as our basis , then for any vector . Our change of basis matrix can then be realized by row reducing the matrix
Activity 16.6 seems to indicate that the inverse of a change of basis matrix is also a change of basis matrix, which assumes that a change of basis matrix is always invertible. The following theorem provides some properties about change of basis matrices. The proofs are left for the exercises.
Find the coordinate vector of with respect to the ordered basis in the indicated vector space.
We need to write as a linear combination of and . If , then equating coefficients of like power terms yields the equations and . The solution to this system is and , so .
We can view the matrix transformation that performs a counterclockwise rotation by an angle around the origin in as a change of basis matrix. Let be the standard basis for , and let , where and . Note that is a vector rotated counterclockwise from the positive -axis by the angle , and is a vector rotated counterclockwise from the positive -axis by the angle .
Let in . Find . Then find , where with . Draw a picture to illustrate how the components of determine coordinates of in the coordinate system with axes and .
Let be the vector such that . Find . Draw a picture to illustrate how the components of determine coordinates of in the coordinate system with axes and .
A permutation matrix is a change of basis matrix that is obtained when the order of the basis vectors is switched. Let and be two ordered bases for . Find .
We are interested in determining the orbit of planet that orbits the sun. Finding the equation of such an orbit is not difficult, but just having an equation is not enough. For many purposes, it is important to know where the planet is fro the perspective or earth observation. This is a more complicated question, one we can address through change of bases matrices. 32
Since planetary orbits are elliptical, not circular, we need to understand ellipses. An ellipse is a shape like a flattened circle. More specifically, while a circle is the set of points equidistant from a fixed point, and ellipse is a set of points so that the sum of the distances from a point on the ellipse to two fixed points (called foci) is a constant. We can use this definition to derive an equation for an ellipse. We will simplify by rotating and translating an ellipse so that its foci are at points and , and the constant sum is . Let be a point on the ellipse as illustrated in Figure 16.10. Use the fact that the sum of the distances from to the foci is to show that satisfies the equation
,(16.2)
where the points and are the intercepts of the ellipse.
The longer axis of an ellipse is called the major axis and the axis perpendicular to the major axis through the origin is the minor axis. Half of these axes (from the origin) are the semi-major axis and the semi-minor axis. So the parameter in (16.2) is the length of the semi-major axis and the parameter is the length of the semi-minor axis. Note that the points and are the intercepts and the points and are the intercepts of this ellipse. Note that if and are equal, then the ellipse is a circle. How far the ellipse deviates from a circle is called the eccentricity (usually denoted as ) of the ellipse. In other words, the eccentricity is a measure of how flattened en ellipse is, and this is determined by how close is to , or how close the ratio is to . Thus, we define the eccentricity of an ellipse by
Now we assume we have a planet (different from the earth) orbiting the sun and we establish how to convert back and forth from the coordinate system of earth's orbit to the coordinate system of the planet's orbit. To do so we need to establish some coordinate systems. We assume the orbit of earth is in the standard plane, with the sun (one of the foci) at the origin. The elliptical orbit of the planet is in some other plane with coordinate axes and . The two orbital planes intersect in a line. Let this line be the axis and let be the angle the positive axis makes with the positive axis. We can represent the elliptical orbit of the planet in the plane, but the and axes are not likely to be the best axes for this orbit. So we define a third coordinate system in the plane so that the origin (the position of the sun) is at one focus of the planet's orbit and the axis is the major axis of the orbit and the axis is the minor axis of the orbit of the planet. The unit vectors ,, and in the positive ,, and directions define a basis for , the unit vectors ,, in the positive ,, and directions define a basis for , and the unit vectors ,, in the positive ,, and directions define a basis for . See Figure 16.11 for illustrations.
Finally, let be the angle between the positive axis and the positive axis as shown at left in Figure 16.11. Our first step is to find the change of basis matrix from to .
The axis is the intersection of the plane with the plane , so the equation of axis in terms of and is . Now we determine the coordinates of in terms of the basis .
Explain why the vector lies on the axis. We take this vector to point in the positive direction. This gives us another representation of — namely that .
Since the angle from to is negative, this angle is . Use this angle and the previous information to find the coordinates of the point and, consequently, explain why
With the change of basis matrices we can convert from any one coordinate system to the other. Note that all of the change of basis matrices are written in terms of angles, so it will be convenient to have a way to express points on our ellipses using angles as well. Given any point on an ellipse (or any point in the plane), we can represent the coordinates of that point in terms of the angle the vector through the origin and the point makes with the positive -axis and the distance from the origin to the point as shown in Figure 16.12. In this representation we have and .
So we can start in the coordinate system with the coordinate vector of a point . Then to view this point in the system, we apply the change of basis matrices
Of course we can also covert from coordinates to coordinates by applying the inverses of our change of basis matrices.
This project is based on the paper “Planetary Orbits: Change of Basis in R”, Donald Teets, Teaching Mathematics and its Applications: An International Journal of the IMA, Volume 17, Issue 2, 1 June 1998, Pages 66-68.