What methods are most commonly used to determine whether a set of vectors is linearly dependent?
How to determine whether a set of vectors is linearly dependent
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0Then the rank tells you the number of linear independent vectors – 2012-12-04
4 Answers
It's equivalent to show $Ax=0$ with $x\neq 0$ is solvable, where $A$ is the matrix of your vectors, each column corresponding to a vector. This can be shown by many methods, one being Gaussian elimination
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0Also note my edited comment. – 2012-09-26
If you have $\{v_1,...,v_n\}\in\mathbb{R}^n$, i.e $n$ vectors in $\mathbb{R}^n$ or generally in some field $\mathbb{F}^n$ then the determinant of the matrix $A=(v_1,...,v_n)$ is a very good and easy way to find out. If $det(A)=0$ then $A$ is singular which is equivalent to the colums of $A$ being linearly dependent.
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0The OP didn't say the number of vectors was $n$. – 2012-09-28
Just by using the definition of linearly depended and solving the corresponding system of linear equations(with any method you want, usually by Gaussian elimination).
For example to deside if the vectors $v_1=(1,2,3,4),v_2=(2,1,3,4),v_3=(1,2,4,8),v_4=(0,3,4,8)$ are linearly depended you will do:
If $r_1,r_2,r_3,r_4 \in \mathbb{F}$($\mathbb{F}$ being your field) such that $r_1v_1+r_2v_2+r_3v_3+r_4v_4=(0,0,0,0)$ then this is equivalent to $(r_1+2r_2+r_3,2r_1+r_2+2r_3+3r_4,3r_1+3r_2+4r_3+4r_4,4r_1+4r_2+8r_3+8r_4)=(0,0,0,0)$ witch is equivalent to the system of linear equations
\begin{split} r_1&+2r_2+r_3\:\:\:\:\:\;\;\;\;\;\;\;=0\\ 2r_1&+\;\;r_2+2r_3+3r_4=0\\ 3r_1&+3r_2+4r_3+4r_4=0\\ 4r_1&+4r_2+8r_3+8r_4=0 \ . \end{split}
If you solve this system (say, by Gaussian elimination) you will find that it has non zero solution (for example $r_1=1,r_2=-1,r_3=1,r_4=-1$) so
$u_1-u_2+u_3-u_4=0$
and your vectors are linearly depented.
One might be able to exhibit an explicit linear combination yielding $0$.
Or one might be able to show that the vectors are all in a vector space of dimension smaller than the given family of vectors.