Tilings,packings, coverings,and the approximation of functions

A packing (resp. covering) ? of a normed space X consisting of unit balls is called completely saturated (resp. completely reduced) if no finite set of its members can be replaced by a more numerous (resp. less numerous) set of unit balls of X without losing the packing property (resp. covering property) of ?. We show that a normed space X admits completely saturated packings with disjoint closed unit balls as well as completely reduced coverings with open unit balls, provided that there exists a tiling of X with unit balls. Completely reduced coverings by open balls are of interest in the context of an approximation theory for continuous real‐valued functions that rests on so‐called controllable coverings of compact metric spaces. The close relation between controllable coverings and completely reduced coverings allows an extension of the approximation theory to non‐compact spaces. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)