**Problem.** Let $\psi(t) = (1, t, t^2, \ldots, t^{p-1})^\top$ - a polynomial basis.
Suppose there is a matrix
$$
   A = \int_{-1}^1 \psi(t) \psi^\top(t) dt, \ \text{i.e. } \ A_{ij} = [2 \, | \, i+j] \cdot \dfrac{2}{i+j+1} \enspace ,
$$
that is, e.g.
$$
    A = 2\cdot\begin{pmatrix}
    1 & 0 & 1/3 & 0 & 1/5 \\
    0 & 1/3 & 0 & 1/5 & 0 \\
    1/3 & 0 & 1/5 & 0 & 1/7 \\
    0 & 1/5 & 0 & 1/7 & 0 \\
    1/5 & 0 & 1/7 & 0 & 1/9
    \end{pmatrix}
\enspace .
$$
We consider the polynomial

$$
   P(t) = \psi^\top(t) A^{-1} \psi(t)
$$
on the segment $t \in [-1, 1]$ for different values of dimension $p$. The observation is that the maximum is always attained at $t = \pm 1$ and equals to $p^2$. I don't know how to prove that, any help is appreciated. So,

**Want to prove:**
$$
    \max_{t \in [-1,1]}P(t) = P(\pm 1) = p^2/2 .
$$

**Observation 1a.** The matrix $A$ is strictly positive-definite (it is  easy to prove that least eigenvalue is not zero), therefore $P(t) > 0$.

**Observation 1b.** Using all this $Tr[AB]=Tr[BA]$ pretty techniques it is not difficult to obtain properties like $\int_{-1}^1 P(t) dt = 1$. However, trying to represent maximum as a limit $\left(\int[P(t)]^q dt)\right)^{1/q}$ is complicated.

**Observation 1c.** We also could note that the inverse matrix has the same zeroes, because it is block inverse matrix.

**Observation 2.** Googling across known series of polynomials didn't seem to be successful. I also didn't find any pattern in what the roots are. However, worth noticing that all the roots lie inside the segment $[-1, 1]$ - again I don't know why.

**Observation 3.** The plots of $P(t)$ for different $p$ look like the following:
[Plot for $p=3$][1], [Plot for $p=5$][2]. It can be noted that the polynomials $P(t)$ factor in an interesting way. If we number them like $P_1(t), P_2(t), \ldots$ then:
$$
   P'_{p+1}(t) = t Q_p(t) \cdot Q_{p+1} (t),
$$
where the sequence of degrees of $Q_p(t)$ is $2,2,4,4,6,6,\ldots$.

Up to a constant, the coefficients of $Q_p(t)$ seem to obey some pattern. For example,
$$
		Q'_8(t) = t \cdot P_7(t) P_8(t) = t
		\left(
			13 t^{6} - 15 t^{4} + \frac{45 t^{2}}{11} - \frac{5}{33}
		\right)
		\left(
			15 t^{6} - 21 t^{4} + \frac{105 t^{2}}{13} - \frac{105}{143}
		\right) \enspace ,
$$
and you can see below that the coefficients have a nice factorization, and the signs of coefficients alternate as for the polynomial $P(t)$.

The polynomials $Q_p(t)$ also attain their maximum at $t = \pm 1$.

Observe the interesting pattern:
\begin{eqnarray*}
Q_1(t) &=& 5t^2 - 1 \cdot 1\\
Q_2(t) &=& 7t^2 - 1 \cdot 3\\
Q_3(t) &=& 9t^4 - 2 \cdot 3 t^2 + \dfrac{1 \cdot 3}{7} \\
Q_4(t) &=& 11t^4 - 2 \cdot 5 t^2 + \dfrac{3 \cdot 5}{9} \\
Q_5(t) &=& 13 t^6 - 3 \cdot 5 t^4 + \dfrac{5 \cdot 9}{11}t^2 - \dfrac{1 \cdot 3 \cdot 5}{9 \cdot 11}\\
Q_6(t) &=& 15 t^6 - 3 \cdot 7 t^4 + \dfrac{3 \cdot 5 \cdot 7}{13} t^2 - \dfrac{3 \cdot 5 \cdot 7}{11 \cdot 13}\\
&& \ldots
\end{eqnarray*}
Generally, I have observed this for $p = 1..10$, but didn't understand the pattern well enough to represent it with some particular formula. For the subsequent polynomials it becomes far less trivial, e.g. a random multiple of $2$ or $4$ appears in some coefficients, and so on. I don't believe this is the most promising path to a solution.

**Motivation.** I am working on the problem of statistical probability density estimation, and the matrix $A$ is kind of local curvature matrix or Fisher information matrix for the particular model. I tried to present the most simple case of the matrix $A$, few complications are also possible, but my goal now is to understand this simple case. The value $\max_{t \in [-1,1]} P(t)$ is crucial for finite-sample confidence intervals.

**Acknowledgements.** I highly appreciate the possibility of a modern scientist to use symbolic computations, in particular *sympy*.

  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/O8zzp.png
  [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/wCovY.png
  [3]: https://i.sstatic.net/FOsis.png