A characterization of an element of best simultaneous approximation

Abstract

Deutsch [4] has suggested that some problems of best simultaneous approximation might profitably be viewed as problems of best approximation in an appropriate product space. A few authors have touched upon this approach; none, however, have pursued it consistently or developed a complete problem along such a line, even in the simplest of cases. In this paper, we show that Deutsch's suggestion can easily be carried out using known results from approximation theory to establish existence, uniqueness, and characterization results. An algorithm guaranteed to converge strongly to the element of best simultaneous approximation under certain circumstances is also proposed.