It is well known that polynomials are dense in $C_{[0,1]}$ the space of continuous functions on $[0,1]$. This is the celebrated Stone-Weierstrass theorem.
I am interested in generalizations of this that include approximations to the derivatives especially higher dimensional analogs using Jacobians. I am aware of one proof for the simple case of $C^1_{[0,1]}$
Case 1: If $f\in C^1_{[0,1]}$ then approximate $f'$ by some polynomial on $[0,1]$ via Weierstrass, and call it $q$. Write $p(x)=\int_0^1 q(x)dx+f(0)$. Then $$|f(x)-p(x)| \leq \int_0^1 |f'(x)-q(x)|dx$$ $$\leq \int_0^1 \|f'-q\|_\infty dx = \|f'-q\|_\infty,$$ which we can make as small as we want. The result follows.
Questions
- Does this result hold for $C^1(\mathbb{R})$? The above method fails as is, since the last integral involves integrating over $(-\infty, \infty)$. Indeed the classic WAT is stated for compact intervals, so this might be a restriction that we can only get uniform approximations on compacts. How is this formulated precisely?
- Does this result generalize to higher dimensions and using Jacobian matrices instead? i.e. can we prove it for $C^{1}(\mathbb{R}^n, \mathbb{R}^k)$? What distance should we use for measuring the approximation of Jacobians $D[p] \approx D[f]$? The Frobenius norm?
I apologize if these are a bit basic function approximation questions. I believe I saw the second question claimed in Rogers and Williams but without proof (I am trying to track down the passage to quote).
Edit 1 After a little thinking, I believe the method above can be generalized for higher dimensions as follows. Let $f \in C^1(\mathbb{R}^n, \mathbb{R})$. So its partials $\partial_i f$ are of class $C(\mathbb{R}^n, \mathbb{R})$, hence by WAT, on compact subsets, we can find a polynomial arbitrarily close to it in the uniform norm. Call it $q_i$. Now, since $f=\int \partial_i f dx^i+C$ where $C$ is a "constant" of integration not depending on the $i$-th coordinate $x^i$, if we let $p = \int q_i dx^i+C$ then $$|f(x)-p(x)|\leq \int |\partial_i f(x)-q_i(x)|dx^i$$ $$\leq C_0 \|\partial_i f-q_i\|_\infty,$$ where $C_0$ is some constant from integrating over the compact subset. Taking the supremum over $x$ in the compact subset yields the result. Then, coordinate-wise, $\nabla f(x)$ is arbitrarily approximated by $\nabla p(x)$. I think similarly this can be extended to $f\in C^1(\mathbb{R}^n, \mathbb{R}^K)$. Have I made any sloppy mistakes or is this about right?