Skip to main content
5 of 7
corrected spelling (unambiguously), typo (dimensional) etc.

"A gentleman never chooses a basis."

Around these parts, the aphorism "A gentleman never chooses a basis," has become popular.

Is there a gentlemanly way to prove that the natural map from V to V** is surjective if V is finite-dimensional?

As in life, the exact standards for gentlemanliness are a bit vague. Some arguments seem to be implicitly picking basis. I'm hoping there's an argument which is unambiguously gentlemanly.

Richard Dore
  • 5.3k
  • 6
  • 36
  • 43