For Lebesgue's lemma for open covers of compact spaces in topology see Lebesgue's number lemma

In mathematics, Lebesgue's lemma is an important statement in approximation theory. It provides a bound for the projection error, controlling the error of approximation by a linear subspace based on a linear projection relative to the optimal error together with the operator norm of the projection.

Statement

Let (V, ||·||) be a normed vector space, U a subspace of V, and P a linear projector on U. Then for each v in V:

${\displaystyle \|v-Pv\|\leq (1+\|P\|)\inf _{u\in U}\|v-u\|.}$

The proof is a one-line application of the triangle inequality: for any u in U, by writing v − Pv as (v − u) + (u − Pu) + P(u − v), it follows that

${\displaystyle \|v-Pv\|\leq \|v-u\|+\|u-Pu\|+\|P(u-v)\|\leq (1+\|P\|)\|u-v\|}$

where the last inequality uses the fact that u = Pu together with the definition of the operator norm ||P||.

See also

• Lebesgue constant (interpolation)

References

• DeVore, Ronald A.; Lorentz, George G. (1993). Constructive approximation. Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften. Vol. 303. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-50627-6. MR 1261635. Zbl 0797.41016.