Extremal Growth of Polynomials

We give an exposition of some simple but applicable cases of worst-case growth of a polynomial in terms of its uniform norm on a given compact set K ⊂ ℂd. Included is a direct verification of the formula for the pluripotential extremal function for a real simplex. Throughout we attempt to make the exposition as accessible to a general (analytic) audience as possible, avoiding wherever possible the finer details of Pluripotential Theory.