A quadratic polynomial with real coefficients and leading coefficient is called disrespectful if the equation is satisfied by exactly three real numbers. Among all the disrespectful quadratic polynomials, there is a unique such polynomial for which the sum of the roots is maximized. What is ?
Pick one
Solution
Suppose . Observe that must have (two) real roots in order for to have any roots at all. More specifically, if is a root of , then or . That is, the equations
together must have exactly three real roots among them. It follows that one of these two quadratics, say , must have discriminant zero.
Expansion yields , so the discriminant of this quadratic must satisfy
This implies that is negative, say , and that . It follows that
where the second inequality follows from the fact that for all real numbers . Thus and , which works. In turn, and .
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