Suppose , and are nonzero real numbers satisfying . Prove that among the three numbers , and , at most two of them are greater than .
Solution
Suppose on the contrary that all three numbers , and are greater than . Since , at least one of , , is positive. WLOG assume . Then implies , and implies .
Next, from , we have
From and , we have , and so
Combining (1) and (2), we have , which easily implies . Similarly we can prove that and . Together with the fact that they are all positive, we have , contradicting the condition . Therefore, at most two of , and are greater than .
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