Norms as Cones: the Unit Ball Is a Slice
An interactive live film: every norm drawn as a height over the plane is a cone, and its slice at height one is the unit ball: circle, diamond, square, tilted ellipse. Find the p whose ball passes through (0.8, 0.8).
Narration
A norm gives every vector a length. Draw that length as a height above the plane, and each norm becomes a surface.
Double a vector and its length doubles, so every such surface is a cone with its tip at the origin. Slice it at height one, and the cut is the unit ball: all vectors of length one.
The rest of the narration is in the book's Companion.
More from Chapter 1
Interactive1:30Span and Independence: When the Dimension JumpsChapter 1
Preview1:31Gram–Schmidt, One Vector at a TimeChapter 1
Preview1:42Projection onto a Line: the Closest PointChapter 1
Preview1:36The Parallelogram Law: Which Norms Come from an Inner ProductChapter 1
Preview1:31The Outer Product: All of Space onto One LineChapter 1
Preview1:29Cauchy-Schwarz: a Shadow Is Never Longer than the StickChapter 1
Preview1:43Layer Normalization: Project, Then RescaleChapter 1