Here we will give an example of a norm on a vector space that is not possible to construct

using an inner product.

Let V = R2 as a vector space over R and define a norm

k(x, y)k = |x| + |y| ,

where |x| is just the absolute value

p of a number x. We claim that there is no inner product
h·, ·i on V such that k(x, y)k = h(x, y), (x, y)i for all (x, y) ∈ V .
To see this, note that every inner product satisfies the parallelogram law. In other words,
given an inner product h·, ·i on V and vectors v, w ∈ V ,

hv + w, v + wi + hv − w, v − wi = 2hv, vi + 2hw, wi .

If it were the case that our norm above were given by an inner product we would find

kv + wk2 + kv − wk2 = 2kvk2 + 2kwk2

for all v, w ∈ V . For a contradiction, suppose this is true for our norm. Choose v = (1, 1)
and w = (1, 1). Then we find

8 = k(1, 1)k2 + k(1, −1)k2 = kv + wk2 + kv − wk2

but
4 = 2k(1, 0)k2 + 2k(0, 1)k2 = 2kvk2 + 2kwk2 .