This paper addresses the problem of finding a B-term wavelet representation of a given discrete function ƒ ∈ Rn whose distance from ƒ is minimized. The problem is well understood when we seek to minimize the Euclidean distance between ƒ and its representation. The first-known algorithms for finding provably approximate representations minimizing general lp distances (including l∞) under a wide variety of compactly supported wavelet bases are presented in this paper. For the Haar basis, a polynomial time approximation scheme is demonstrated. These algorithms are applicable in the one-pass sublinear-space data stream model of computation. They generalize naturally to multiple dimensions and weighted norms. A universal representation that provides a provable approximation guarantee under all p-norms simultaneously; and the first approximation algorithms for bit-budget versions of the problem, known as adaptive quantization, are also presented. Further, it is shown that the algorithms presented here can be used to select a basis from a tree-structured dictionary of bases and find a B-term representation of the given function that provably approximates its best dictionary-basis representation.