Let be a real number. Determine the sum of all three solutions of the equation
Solution
Let us write the equation as:
Group the terms:
This is a cubic equation of the form:
where and .
By Vieta's formulas, the sum of the roots of the cubic equation is (since the coefficient of is ).
Therefore, the sum of all three solutions is .
Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track
puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.