Suppose linear operators on a normed vector space satisfy uniformly and on a dense subspace. The displayed triangle inequality for any element of that subspace first permits to approximate , then lets increase, proving for every . Applied to the Bernstein polynomial, the Weierstrass approximation theorem supplies the dense polynomial subspace and .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2010 iii Paper 62 1 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The Weierstrass approximation theorem states that the polynomials are a dense subspace of in the supremum norm. By linearity and (c), uniformly for every polynomial . Given and , choose a polynomial with . The operator norm estimate in (a) givesFirst let , then . Hence for every continuous . This is an instance of extension of approximation operators from a dense subspace.