Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 ib Paper 2 18D b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Write , finite and positive. Exactness on the constant polynomial gives . Positivity therefore implies the uniform operator bound , and the integral has the same bound.
For a continuous and , the Weierstrass approximation theorem gives a fixed polynomial of degree with . For every , polynomial exactness gives . ThusSince is arbitrary, for every continuous . This is convergence of positive quadrature on continuous functions. The argument requires nodes in , implicit in a rule defined on all continuous functions there; otherwise their function values would not even be specified by the stated domain. Exactness alone would not provide the norm bound if arbitrarily signed weights were allowed.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 ii Paper 2 2I Solution 2026-10-06
To prove convergence of positive quadrature on continuous functions, for a continuous , the Weierstrass approximation theorem supplies a polynomial with . For every sufficiently large , the Gaussian quadrature rule is exact for this fixed polynomial. Positivity of its weights and their sum then giveSince is arbitrary, . Notice that no differentiability of is needed; uniform polynomial approximation and positivity provide the whole argument.