Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2023/ib/paper-3/17b/b/solution

Suppose that an -node quadrature rule were exact on . The nodal polynomial has degree , so . At every node it vanishes, and hence
But is a nonzero nonnegative polynomial, and the weight function is positive on . Therefore
a contradiction. This is the degree ceiling for quadrature exactness.

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