Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.8 AIME, harder Prove it Soviet Union

Problem:
If you have an algorithm for finding all the real zeros of any cubic polynomial, how do you find the real solutions to {x}={p(y)}\{x\} = \{p(y)\}, {y}={p(x)}\{y\} = \{p(x)\}, where pp is a cubic polynomial?

Solution

Solution:
Let p(x)ax3+bx2+cx+dp(x) \equiv a x^3 + b x^2 + c x + d. Finding the solutions with x=yx = y is obvious, just solve the cubic ax3+bx2+(c1)x+d=0a x^3 + b x^2 + (c - 1)x + d = 0.

For xyx \neq y, we have xy=a(y3x3)+b(y2x2)+c(yx)x - y = a(y^3 - x^3) + b(y^2 - x^2) + c(y - x).

Dividing by yxy - x gives a(x2+xy+y2)+b(x+y)+c+1=0a(x^2 + x y + y^2) + b(x + y) + c + 1 = 0.

Put s=x+ys = x + y, t=xyt = x y and this becomes as2at+bs+c+1=0a s^2 - a t + b s + c + 1 = 0 (*).

We also have x+y=a(x+y)(x2xy+y2)+b(x2+y2)+c(x+y)+2dx + y = a(x + y)(x^2 - x y + y^2) + b(x^2 + y^2) + c(x + y) + 2d, or s=as(s23t)+b(s22t)+cs+3ds = a s (s^2 - 3 t) + b(s^2 - 2 t) + c s + 3 d.

Substituting for tt from (*) we get a cubic in ss. Solving, we then recover tt from (*) and then solve a quadratic to get x,yx, y from s,ts, t.

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