Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.1 AIME, harder Prove it Bulgaria

Problem:
Find all real numbers aa, such that the inequality
x4+2ax3+a2x24x+3>0 x^{4}+2 a x^{3}+a^{2} x^{2}-4 x+3>0
holds true for all real numbers xx.

Solution

Solution:
First Solution. Write the equation in the form
x2(x+a)2>4x3 x^{2}(x+a)^{2}>4 x-3
Then for x=1x=1 we get (a+1)2>1(a+1)^{2}>1, i.e. a>0a>0 or a<2a<-2. If a<2a<-2, then x=ax=-a gives a contradiction 0>4a30>-4 a-3. Thus, a>0a>0.

Conversely, if a>0a>0, then (1) is satisfied for all xx. Indeed, when x0x \leq 0 this is obvious and when x>0x>0 we have x2(x+a)2>x44x+3x^{2}(x+a)^{2}>x^{4} \geq 4 x+3, since the later inequality is equivalent to (x1)2((x+1)2+2)0(x-1)^{2}\left((x+1)^{2}+2\right) \geq 0.

Second Solution. It follows from (1) that we have to find all aa, for which
a<- 4 x-3 x -x=f(x)\text{a<- 4 x-3 x -x=f(x)}
for all x43x \geq \frac{4}{3} or
a>4x3xx=g(x) a>\frac{\sqrt{4 x-3}}{x}-x=g(x)
for all x43x \geq \frac{4}{3}.

The first case is impossible since limx+f(x)=\lim _{x \rightarrow+\infty} f(x)=-\infty. The maximum of the function gg equals 00 (and it is attained for x=1x=1 ). Therefore the answer is a>0a>0.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.