Let f (z) be a continuous function defined on the compact set K ⊂ C and let E n (f ) = E n (f, K) be the degree of approximation to f, for the supremum norm on K, by polynomials of degree (at most) n. ThusHere P n denotes the space of polynomials of degree at most n and . is the supremum norm on K.For a positive integer s and for 0 < a < b, letWe show that for a large class of piecewise analytic functions f defined on K lim sup n→∞ (E n (f, K)) 1 n = s b s 2 −a s 2 b s 2 +a s 2 , thus recovering several classical results.The proof of this error estimate is then translated into an algorithm that finds the polynomial of near best approximation.