The subject of wavelets is expanding at such a tremendous rate that it is impossible to give, within these few pages, a complete introduction to all aspects of its theory. We hope, however, to allow the reader to become sufficiently acquainted with the subject to understand, in part, the enthusiasm of its proponents toward its potential application to various numerical problems. Furthermore, we hope that our exposition can guide the reader who wishes to make more serious excursions into the subject. Our viewpoint is biased by our experience in approximation theory and data compression; we warn the reader that there are other viewpoints that are either not represented here or discussed only briefly. For example, orthogonal wavelets were developed primarily in the context of signal processing, an application upon which we touch only indirectly. However, there are several good expositions (e.g. Daubechies (1990) and Rioul and Vetterli (1991)) of this application. A discussion of wavelet decompositions in the context of Littlewood-Paley theory can be found in the monograph of Frazieret al. (1991). We shall also not attempt to give a complete discussion of the history of wavelets. Historical accounts can be found in the book of Meyer (1990) and the introduction of the article of Daubechies (1990). We shall try to give sufficient historical commentary in the course of our presentation to provide some feeling for the subject's development.
