Let K {\displaystyle {}K} denote a field, let V {\displaystyle {}V} denote a K {\displaystyle {}K} -vector space, and let a basis v 1 , … , v n {\displaystyle {}v_{1},\ldots ,v_{n}} of V {\displaystyle {}V} be given. Let w ∈ V {\displaystyle {}w\in V} be a vector with a representation
where s k ≠ 0 {\displaystyle {}s_{k}\neq 0} for some fixed k {\displaystyle {}k} .