Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/prelims/mathematics-i/4/a/solution

The prescribed form is a sum of products of real polynomial evaluations. It is a symmetric bilinear form, since each evaluation is a linear map. Also
Equality forces . A nonzero polynomial of degree of a polynomial at most two cannot have three distinct roots of a polynomial, by the root bound for a polynomial. Thus equality holds only for the zero polynomial, establishing positive definiteness. Therefore the form is a real inner product, and is an inner product space. This is a discrete sampling inner product on polynomial spaces.

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