The standard way of representing multidimensional functions are tensor or full grids. The number of basis functions or nodes (grid points) that have to be stored and processed depend exponentially on the number of dimensions.
The curse of dimensionality is expressed in the order of the integration error that is made by a quadrature of level , with points. The function has regularity , i.e. is times differentiable. The number of dimensions is .
Smolyak found a computationally more efficient method of integrating multidimensional functions based on a univariate quadrature rule . The -dimensional Smolyak integral of a function can be written as a recursion formula with the tensor product.
The index to is the level of the discretization. If a 1-dimension integration on level is computed by the evaluation of points, the error estimate for a function of regularity will be
Zenger, Christoph (1991). "Sparse Grids"(PDF). In Hackbusch, Wolfgang (ed.). Parallel Algorithms for Partial Differential Equations. Vieweg. pp. 241–251. ISBN3-528-07631-3.