Let be a positive integer and let the trigonometric polynomial have frequencies only in . For every , its Fourier partial sum is the polynomial itself: . Every term in the defining average of the de la Vallée Poussin sum therefore equals , giving
This is exact reproduction of the degree-at-most- trigonometric polynomials, irrespective of the positive averaging length .
The indexing of the Fejér sums gives
Subtracting removes precisely the initial Fourier partial sums. Thus
For , omit the second term, so that no undefined is needed. Apply the triangle inequality and the uniform-norm contraction of Fejér summation estimate to get
Hence the operator norm of the de la Vallée Poussin sum is at most .
If a bounded linear map reproduces every element of an approximating polynomial space , then for every . The triangle inequality and infimum over prove the displayed error bound. The same argument works for any linear approximating space, and applies in particular to de la Vallée Poussin sums.