We consider linear problems in the worst case setting. That is, given a linear operator and a pool of admissible linear measurements, we want to approximate the values of the operator uniformly on a convex and balanced set by means of algorithms that use at most n such measurements. It is known that, in general, linear algorithms do not yield an optimal approximation. However, as we show in this paper, an optimal approximation can always be obtained with a homogeneous algorithm. This is of interest to us for two reasons. First, the homogeneity allows us to extend any error bound on the unit ball to the full input space. Second, homogeneous algorithms are better suited to tackle problems on cones, a scenario that is far less understood than the classical situation of balls. We use the optimality of homogeneous algorithms to prove solvability for a family of problems defined on cones. We illustrate our results by several examples.

Function values are, in some sense, “almost as good” as general linear information for L2-approximation (optimal recovery, data assimilation) of functions from a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. This was recently proved by new upper bounds on the sampling numbers under the assumption that the singular values of the embedding of this Hilbert space into L2 are square-summable. Here we mainly prove new lower bounds. In particular we prove that the sampling numbers behave worse than the approximation numbers for Sobolev spaces with small smoothness. Hence there can be a logarithmic gap also in the case where the singular numbers of the embedding are square-summable. We first prove new lower bounds for the integration problem, again for rather classical Sobolev spaces of periodic univariate functions.

In the first part we have shown that, for L2-approximation of functions from a separable Hilbert space in the worst-case setting, linear algorithms based on function values are almost as powerful as arbitrary linear algorithms if the linear widths are square-summable. That is, they achieve the same polynomial rate of convergence. In this sequel, we prove a similar result for separable Banach spaces and other classes of functions.