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Let X be an affine space over a field k, and V be its associated vector space. An affine transformation is a bijection f from X onto itself that is an affine map; this means that a linear map g from V to V is well defined by the equation () = (); here, as usual, the subtraction of two points denotes the free vector from the second point to the first one, and "well-defined" means that ...
In mathematics, the affine group or general affine group of any affine space is the group of all invertible affine transformations from the space into itself. In the case of a Euclidean space (where the associated field of scalars is the real numbers), the affine group consists of those functions from the space to itself such that the image of every line is a line.
A reflection about a line or plane that does not go through the origin is not a linear transformation — it is an affine transformation — as a 4×4 affine transformation matrix, it can be expressed as follows (assuming the normal is a unit vector): [′ ′ ′] = [] [] where = for some point on the plane, or equivalently, + + + =.
Further, transformations of projective space that preserve affine space (equivalently, that leave the hyperplane at infinity invariant as a set) yield transformations of affine space. Conversely, any affine linear transformation extends uniquely to a projective linear transformation, so the affine group is a subgroup of the projective group.
These are precisely the affine transformations with the property that the image of every line g is a line parallel to g. In projective geometry, a homothetic transformation is a similarity transformation (i.e., fixes a given elliptic involution) that leaves the line at infinity pointwise invariant. [2]
In plane geometry, a shear mapping is an affine transformation that displaces each point in a fixed direction by an amount proportional to its signed distance from a given line parallel to that direction. [1] This type of mapping is also called shear transformation, transvection, or just shearing.
In projective geometry, affine space means the complement of a hyperplane at infinity in a projective space. Affine space can also be viewed as a vector space whose operations are limited to those linear combinations whose coefficients sum to one, for example 2x − y, x − y + z, (x + y + z)/3, ix + (1 − i)y, etc.
This concept is fundamental in Euclidean geometry and affine geometry, because the set of all affine combinations of a set of points forms the smallest affine space containing the points, exactly as the linear combinations of a set of vectors form their linear span. The affine combinations commute with any affine transformation T in the sense that