Intractability results for positive quadrature formulas and extremal problems for trigonometric polynomials

Lower bounds for the error of quadrature formulas with positive weights are proved. We get intractability results for quasi-Monte Carlo methods and, more generally, for positive formulas. We consider general classes of functions but concentrate on lower bounds for relatively small classes of trigonometric polynomials. We also conjecture that similar lower bounds hold for arbitrary quadrature formulas and state different equivalent conjectures concerning positive definiteness of certain matrices and certain extremal problems for trigonometric polynomials. We also study classes of functions with weighted norms where some Variables are "more important" than others. Positive quadrature formulas are then tractable iff the sum of the wrights is bounded. (C) 1999 Academic Press.