The exact rate of approximation in Ulam's method

Abstract

This paper investigates the exact rate of convergence in Ulam's method: a well-known discretization scheme for approximating the invariant density of an absolutely continuous invariant probability measure for piecewise expanding interval maps. It is shown by example that the rate is no better than $O(\frac{\log n}{n})$, where $n$ is the number of cells in the discretization. The result is in agreement with upper estimates previously established in a number of general settings, and shows that the conjectured rate of $O(\frac{1}{n})$ cannot be obtained, even for extremely regular maps.