Spectacularly large expansion coefficients in M\"untz's theorem

Abstract: M"untz's theorem asserts, for example, that the even powers

1, x^{2}, x^{4}, d o t s

are dense in

C ([0, 1])

. We show that the associated expansions are so inefficient as to have no conceivable relevance to any actual computation. For example, approximating

f (x) = x

to accuracy

v a r e p s i l o n = 1 0^{- 6}

in this basis requires powers larger than

x^{280,000}

and coefficients larger than

1 0^{107,000}

. We present a theorem establishing exponential growth of coefficients with respect to

1 / v a r e p s i l o n

.

This page was built for publication: Spectacularly large expansion coefficients in M\"untz's theorem