An optimal first-order Taylor-like formula with a minimized remainder

Abstract: In this paper, we derive an optimal first-order Taylor-like formula. In a seminal paper [14], we introduced a new first-order Taylor-like formula that yields a reduced remainder compared to the classical Taylor's formula. Here, we relax the assumption of equally spaced points in our formula. Instead, we consider a sequence of unknown points and a sequence of unknown weights. Then, we solve an optimization problem to determine the best distribution of points and weights that ensures that the remainder is as minimal as possible.