TITLE: Convex Set with Empty Interior Lies in an Affine Set
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: In Section 2.5.2 of the book Convex Optimization by Boyd and Vandenberghe, the authors mentioned without proving that "a convex set in $\mathbb{R}^n$ with empty interior must lie in an affine set of dimension less than $n$." While I can intuitively understand this result, I was wondering how it can be proved formally?

REPLY [4 votes]: Look at $d+1$,  the largest number of affinely independent points from $C$. Let $x_0$, $\ldots$, $x_d$ one such affinely independent subset of largest size. Note that every other point is an affine combination of the points $x_k$, so lies in the affine subspace generated by them, which is of dimension $d$.  
If $d < n$ then this subspace is contained in an affine hyperplane. 
If $d=n$, then $C$ contains $d+1$ affinely independent points. Since $C$ is convex, it will also contain the convex hull of those $n+1$ points. Now, in an $n$-dimensional space the convex hull of $n+1$ affinely independent points has non-empty interior. So the interior of $C$ is non-empty.