Examples of functions whose sequence of strong unicity constants is unbounded (Q791784)

If \(f\in C[-1,1]\), the classical Chebyshev equioscillation theorem asserts that \(| E_ n(f)| \geq n+2\) where \(| A|\) denotes the cardinality of the set A and \(E_ n(f)\) is the extreme set of f. \textit{M. W. Bartelt} and \textit{D. Schmidt} [ibid. 33, 69-79 (1981; Zbl 0478.41024)] showed the existence of nonpolynomial \(f\in C[-1,1]\) by an appeal to the Baire Category Theorem. The present work explicitly constructs a class of functions whose extreme sets contain more than \(n+2\) points for all sufficiently large n. Indeed, if \[ S(x)=(1/2)(1- x^ 2)^{1/2}\sin(\pi /(x+1)),\quad x\in(-1,1],\quad S(-1)=0 \] and \(T_ k(x)\) is the Chebyshev polynomial of the first kind of degree k, then it is shown that \(| E_ n(S_{2k})| \geq n+k+2\) where \(S_{2k}=S{\mathbb{O}}T_ k\).