No label defined (Q4517090)

The authors discuss piecewise linear approximation to an \(n\)-variate quadratic function. The approximation is linear on the simplices of a triangulation. The problem considered is the following. Given a quadratic polynomial, find the piecewise linear approximation such that the \(L^\infty\)-norm is below a certain tolerance and such that the number of simplices is as small as possible, i.e., the pieces where the approximant is part of a certain hyperplane are as large as possible. Hence, for a given approximation error bound, some optimal tessellation is to be found. Not anly triangulations but also non-simplicial cells (bi- or trivariate surface graphs) are considered. Although the general idea is presented for general \(n\), the details for definite, indefinite and semidefinite quadratic forms are ellaborated in detail for the case \(n=2\) only. For \(n=3\), the detailed analysis is much harder and only few results are given.