Linearly independent but not orthogonal, how come?

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SUMMARY

The discussion clarifies the distinction between linearly independent vectors and orthogonal vectors. Linearly independent vectors cannot be expressed as a linear combination of each other, while orthogonal vectors have a dot product of zero, indicating they are at right angles. The example provided illustrates that vectors such as <1, 0> and <1, 1> are linearly independent but not orthogonal, as their angle is 45 degrees. The Gram-Schmidt process is mentioned as a method to convert linearly independent vectors into an orthogonal basis.

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physlad
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Hi everyone, I was reading about Gram-Schmidt process of converting two linearly independent vectors into orthogonal basis. But, as I understand, if two vectors are linearly independent then they are orthogonal! isn't that right??
Could anybody explain... please.
 
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No. What does it mean to have a set of linearly independent vectors? What does it mean to have a set of orthogonal vectors?
 
As I understand, a set of linearly independent vectors means that it is not possible to write any of them in terms of the others.
a set of orthogonal vectors means that the dot product of any two of them is zero. which in turn means that they are independent of each other, right? that's what confuses me.
 
Vectors which are orthogonal to each other are linearly independent. But this does not imply that all linearly independent vectors are also orthogonal. Take i+j for example. The linear span of that i+j is k(i+j) for all real values of k. and you can visualise it as the vector stretching along the x-y plane in a northeast and southwest direction. However, there does not exist any value of k such that k(i+j) = i. i and i+j are linearly independent, but not orthogonal.
 
For example, in R2, the vectors <1, 0> and <1, 1,> are independent since the only way to have a<1, 0>+ b<1, 1>= 0 is to have a= 0 and b= 0. But they are NOT "orthogonal"- the angle between them is 45 degrees, not 90.

As Defennndeer said, if two vectors are orthogonal, then they are linearly independent but it does NOT work the other way.
 

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