Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/iii/paper-69/4/c/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 69 4 c Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Fix the degree bound . Existence can be proved without a general uniqueness theorem: a minimizing sequence in is uniformly bounded because its distances from are bounded. Values at any fixed distinct points determine its coefficients through an invertible Vandermonde matrix, so those coefficients are bounded. A convergent subsequence supplies a polynomial attaining the minimum.
For uniqueness of best uniform polynomial approximation, suppose and attain the same minimum , and let . The triangle inequality makes another minimizer. If , both polynomials equal , so assume . Put and . At each , the two real errors and lie in and their average equals an endpoint. Hence they are equal there, and .
The set must contain at least points. Otherwise interpolate the values on its at most points by a polynomial . Then on . Continuity gives this positivity on a neighbourhood of , while the error has a strict gap below on the compact complement. A sufficiently small positive multiple of decreases the maximum error, contradicting optimality of . This is an elementary perturbation argument, not an appeal to Haar's theorem.
Thus has at least distinct zeros. A polynomial of degree at most with that many zeros is identically zero. The best uniform polynomial is unique for every fixed degree bound: .
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