Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 ib Paper 4 8C Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
For any distinct nodes, the polynomial has degree , is nonnegative, and vanishes at every node. The quadrature rule sum for is zero, but because the weight is positive and is positive except at finitely many points. Therefore no such rule is exact for all polynomials of degree at most , irrespective of the chosen weights.
For the sine weight, its first four moments are . A monic degree-two orthogonal polynomial issince direct use of these moments gives . Its roots lie in and areThe weights follow by requiring exactness for and : and , and the symmetric nodes imply both weights are one. To prove cubic exactness, divide any cubic as , with of degree at most one. The integral of is zero by orthogonality, and its nodal values vanish; the remaining linear polynomial is integrated exactly. This is the two-node Gaussian quadrature with sine weight; the argument proves its Gaussian quadrature property without assuming a general quadrature theorem.