Suppose is a positive integer-valued function defined for the set of positive integers satisfying for any pair of positive integers the following inequality:
Determine the minimum and the maximum value of for this .
Solution
Let . We will first show that a necessary and sufficient condition for a positive integer-valued function defined on the set positive integers to satisfy the given inequality is that satisfies the following simpler inequality:
To see this, first note that for any positive integer , substituting into the given inequality, we obtain , from which we get . Next, for any positive integer , substitute into the given inequality and using the fact which follows from the result above, we get
which yields further that
Since is positive integer-valued, we conclude that , and in particular, . Finally, substituting into the given inequality, we get , from which we get , and thus we have shown that the function satisfying the given inequality satisfies the inequality for any positive integer .
Conversely, suppose a positive integer-valued function satisfies the inequality for any positive integer . Then, for any pair of positive integers , we have
so that satisfies the inequality given for the problem.
Thus, if satisfies the given inequality, then we have
and since the value of and can be chosen to take any of the integer values in and , we conclude that the minimum possible value for is and the maximum possible value is .