Inner Products

P Vanchinathan
VIT Chennai
vanchinathan.p@vit.ac.in

February 12, 2020

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 Dot Products

Given two vectors u, v with u = (a1 , a2 , . . . , an )T , v = (b1 , b2 , . . . , bn )

their dot product u.v is the sum a1 b1 + a2 b2 + · · · + an bn .
Properties:
u.(v + w) = u.v + u.w; u.kv = k(u.v) (LINEARITY)
v.u = u.v (Symmetry)
v.v ≥ 0. and 0 is possible ONLY for v = 0 (Positive Definiteness)
Example: Dot product of (2, 1, −20) and (3, 5, 1) is
((2 × 3 + 1 × 5 + (−20 × 1) = −9.
Definition Any real-valued function satisfying the above conditions
(should be defined for any pair of input vectors on a vector space V ) is
called an inner product on V .

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 Inner Products using Matrices

If I denotes the identity matrix a complicated way of writing dot

product is u.v = v T Iu.
For any other matrix A if we define hu, vi = v T Au, clearly Linearity is
valid.
If A is chosen as symmetric matrix then (note that any single number
can be regarded as 1 × 1 symmetric matrix!) hv, ui = v T Au (being a
number, it is symmetric, so)

hvui = uT Av = (uT Av)T = v T AT u = v T Au = hu, vi

Further if A is chosen to have all ”main-diagonal-submatrices” to

have positive determinant then this will give an inner product.
A symmetric matrix with all the main diagonal submatrices having
positive determinant is called a POSITIVE DEFINITE matrix.

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 MATRIX of a basis from an Inner product

Given a basis {v1 , v2 , . . . , vn } fill an n × n matrix with inner product

hvi , vj i as the (i, j)-th entry.
This matrix will be symmetric and positive definite!
Example: v1 = (1, 1, 1), v2 = (−1, 2, 1), v3 = (2, 3, −1).

v1 .v1 = 3; v2 .v2 = 6; v3 .v3 = 4+9+1 = 14; v1 .v2 = 2; v1 .v3 = 4; v2 .v3 = 0

So the matrix of the dot product for this basis

 
3 2 4
2 6 4 
4 4 14

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 Inner Product on Polynomial Vector Space

For polynomials f (x), g(x) we define

Z 1
hf (x), g(x)i = f (x)g(x)dx
−1

This satisfies all 3 conditions required for being an inner product. In fact
changing the limits of the definite integral to some other two numbers will
also give (a different) inner product.
Exercise: Find the matrix of this inner product for the basis {1, x, x2 }.

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 Length, Angles, Orthogonality

√
The length of a vector v ∈ Rn , denoted kvk, is given by ||v|| = v.v
If the length of a vector is 1, it is called a UNIT vector.
1
For any non-zero vector v, the scalar multiple ||v|| v is a unit vector
and is in the same direction as v.
If θ is the angle between u and v then
u.v
cos θ = .
kukkvk

Two vectors are said to be orthogonal (perpendicular) if their dot

product is zero.

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 Orthogonal Matrices

A square matrix is said to be ORTHOGONAL if the columns (i) are

all unit vectors, and (ii) are perpendicular to each other.
A matix is orthogonal iff AT A = Id, so det(A) = ±1.
Product of two orthogonal matrices is again orthogonal.
Inverse of an orthogonal matrix is also orthogonal.
All rotation matrices and reflection matrices are orthogonal.
Permutation matrices (rearrange columns of I) are orthogonal.
Large Orthogonal matrices can be constructed using smaller ones as
building blocks placing them as diagonal blocks, and putting zero
matrices in off-diagonal blocks.

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