Vector spaces as unions of proper subspaces (Q840668)

Suppose that \(V\) be a nonzero vector space over a field \(F\) and \(k\) is an integer with \(1\leq k<\dim V\). Let \(\nu=\nu(F,V,k)\) denote the least cardinality of a set \(\mathcal{S}\) of subspaces of \(V\) of codimension \(\geq k\) such that the union of \(\mathcal{S}\) is \(V\). It is well known that \(\nu\) is infinite when \(F\) is infinite, and the present paper gives the exact value of \(\nu\) in all cases. If \(F\) is infinite, then \(\nu=\aleph_{0}\) when \(\dim V\) is also infinite, and \(\nu=\left| F\right| \) when \(\dim V\) is finite. On the other hand, if \(F\) is finite of size \(q\), then \(\nu=q^{k}+1\) if \(\dim V\) is infinite, and \(\nu=\left\lceil (q^{n}-1)/(q^{n-k}-1)\right\rceil \) when \(n:=\dim V<\infty\).