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Orthogonal Projections and Distances

The document contains 5 problems related to linear algebra concepts: 1) Calculating projections and orthogonal complements of vectors and finding the distance from a point to a line. 2) Proving that the orthogonal complement of a vector is always orthogonal to its projection. 3) Finding the distance between a point and a line. 4) Finding equations for a plane using a normal vector and intersections with coordinate axes. 5) Geometrically interpreting and justifying the triangle inequality using properties of the dot product.

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6 views1 page

Orthogonal Projections and Distances

The document contains 5 problems related to linear algebra concepts: 1) Calculating projections and orthogonal complements of vectors and finding the distance from a point to a line. 2) Proving that the orthogonal complement of a vector is always orthogonal to its projection. 3) Finding the distance between a point and a line. 4) Finding equations for a plane using a normal vector and intersections with coordinate axes. 5) Geometrically interpreting and justifying the triangle inequality using properties of the dot product.

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scribdthrower
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Tuesday, September 4

Projections, distances, and planes.

1. Let a = i + j and b = 2i 1j. (a) Calculate projb a and draw a picture of it together with a and b. (b) The orthogonal complement of the vector a with respect to b is dened by orthb a = a projb a. Calculate orthb a and draw two copies of it in your picture from part (a), one based at 0 and the other at projb a. (c) Check that orthb a calculated in (b) is orthogonal to projb a calculated in (a). (d) Find the distance of the point (1, 1) from the line (x, y) = t (2, 1). Hint: relate this to your picture. 2. Let a and b be vectors in Rn . Use the denitions of projb a and orthb a to show that orthb a is always orthogonal to projb a. 3. Find the distance between the point P (3, 4, 1) and the line l(t ) = (2, 3, 2) + t (1, 1, 1). Hint: Consider a vector starting at some point on the line and ending at P , and connect this to what you learned in Problem 1. 4. Consider the equation of the plane x + 2y + 3z = 12. (a) Find a normal vector n to the plane. (Just look at the equation!) (b) Find where the x, y, and z-axes intersect the plane. Using this information, sketch the portion of the plane in the rst octant where x 0, y 0, z 0. (c) Using the points in part (b), nd two non-parallel vectors that are parallel to the plane. (d) Using the dot product to check that the vectors you found in (c) are really orthogonal to n. (e) Pick another normal vector n to the plane and one of the points from (b). Use these to nd an alternative equation for the plane. Compare this new equation to x + 2y + 3z = 12. How are these two equations related? Is it clear that they describe the same set of points (x, y, z) in R3 ? 5. The Triangle Inequality. Let a and b be any vectors in Rn . The triangle inequality states that |a + b| |a| + |b|. (a) Give a geometric interpretation of the triangle inequality. (E.g. draw a picture in R2 or R3 that represents this inequality.) (b) Use what we know about the dot product to explain why |a b| |a| |b|. This is called the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. (c) Use part (b) to justify the triangle inequality. Hint: Start with the fact that |a + b|2 = (a + b) (a + b) and then use properties of the dot product and the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality to manipulate the right-hand side into looking like |a|2 + |b|2 .

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