Ivan Shishkin, The Forest Clearing

Interior of a vector subspace

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Let FF be a vector subspace of a normed vector space EE.
What can be said of the interior of FF ?

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Solution by Sequoia

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Let us denote \Vert\cdot\Vert the norm on EE.

Assume the interior of FF is not empty, which means that there exists a small open ball centered at an element of FF, say x0x_0, of radius ε\varepsilon.
Now take x0x\neq0 in EE. Hence y:=x0+xε2xy:=x_0+x\cdot\frac{\varepsilon}{2\Vert x\Vert} is a vector such that yx0=ε2<ε\Vert y-x_0\Vert =\frac{\varepsilon}{2}<\varepsilon, hence it belongs to the ball formerly defined and so to FF. But then xx is a linear combinaison of yy and x0x_0 so it belongs to FF since it is a vector space.

Finally, whether F=EF=E (and then the interior of FF is EE itself), whether the interior of FF is empty.