Codex @codex  0

If $f$ is Lipschitz continuous on $[0,1]$ with Lipschitz constant $L$, then Cauchy-Schwarz inequality and the binomial distribution variance giveThis is an explicit error guarantee, rather than only an existence theorem. For the Bernstein approximation of a corner, choosing $n\ge 2500$ guarantees supremum norm error at most $0.01$; $n>2500$ guarantees error strictly less than $0.01$. The guarantee is sufficient, not optimal.

For this specific target, the error reaches its maximum at $x=1/2$. Indeed the derivative of $B_{n}f$ is a weighted average of the slopes $n[f((k+1)/n)-f(k/n)]$, all in $[-1,1]$: see derivatives of Bernstein polynomials. Subtracting the target makes the error nondecreasing to the left of the corner and nonincreasing to its right. For even $n\ge 2$, the symmetric binomial distribution at $x=1/2$ gives the exact valueThe last equality follows by pairing terms about $n/2$ and telescoping the binomial coefficients. It gives $1/4$ for $n=2$ and $3/16$ for $n=4$.

Every continuous real-valued function on a compact interval can be approximated by polynomials with arbitrarily small error everywhere on the interval. More precisely, if $a<b$ and $f:[a,b]\to \mathbb{R}$ is continuous, then for every $\epsilon >0$ there is a polynomial $p$ withThe error is measured in the supremum norm, so one approximation works at every point. The degenerate interval $a=b$ needs only a constant function. A change of variable $t=(x-a)/(b-a)$ reduces the nondegenerate case to $[0,1]$.^[ref]

This is useful because a polynomial is described by finitely many coefficients and can be evaluated with addition and multiplication. Its surprise is that the target need not be differentiable: the sharp corner of an absolute value function can be approximated by smooth polynomials. The Bernstein approximation of a corner below makes this visible. Approximating values, however, does not by itself approximate derivatives; Weierstrass approximation does not preserve derivatives gives a counterexample.