If is Lipschitz continuous on with Lipschitz constant , then Cauchy-Schwarz inequality and the binomial distribution variance give
This is an explicit error guarantee, rather than only an existence theorem. For the Bernstein approximation of a corner, choosing guarantees supremum norm error at most ; guarantees error strictly less than . The guarantee is sufficient, not optimal.
Figure 1. . Left: error profiles for and selected Bernstein polynomials. Right: for even positive degrees, exact maximum error is compared with the sufficient bound . All values are model calculations; no experimental data are represented. Details.
For this specific target, the error reaches its maximum at . Indeed the derivative of is a weighted average of the slopes , all in : 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 , the symmetric binomial distribution at gives the exact value
The last equality follows by pairing terms about and telescoping the binomial coefficients. It gives for and for .
Write the Bernstein basis as , with for out-of-range indices. The Bernstein polynomial is
Differentiation and the identities and give . Shifting the first sum's index therefore yields
Repeating this calculation takes another forward finite difference of the coefficients and lowers the degree by one. Induction proves the derivatives of Bernstein polynomials formula
For , define a continuous function on by
All sampled arguments lie in , since the largest is . At the degree- sampling point , this gives exactly the coefficient , and hence . The rescaling is essential: the sampling meshes are and , and the function depends on . For , the derivative is the constant , interpreted as a degree-zero Bernstein polynomial.
Now fix and assume . The supplied uniform limit of normalized finite differences, together with and uniform continuity of , shows that
Positivity and imply . For completeness, if then , and . Splitting according to whether and using Chebyshev's inequality gives
First let and then ; this proves uniform convergence for each continuous . Finally,
Thus Bernstein polynomial derivatives converge uniformly to the corresponding derivatives of , for each fixed with . Continuity of alone is sufficient for the definition of , but not for this derivative conclusion.