Let be a real number. Prove that for all sufficiently large positive integers like , there is a monic polynomial of degree , such that all of its coefficients are either or and
Solution
At first we shall prove following lemma:
Lemma. Let be a sequence of positive real numbers satisfying
then for each real number where
there are such that
Proof. Write the inequality in the form
then, proceed the proof by induction on . For sake of convenience, we also define . This completes our proof.
Back to the problem, define , then it is easy to deduce that
Moreover, choose such that , then
Hence, by the lemma, there are such that
We are done.
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