Find all functions satisfying the equality for every .
Solution
Substituting into the original equation gives
So, if for at least one then also . Then taking and arbitrary in the original identity gives , i.e., .
Assume in the rest that for every . Substituting into the original equation gives . Hence, for every ,
Substituting (2) into the original equation and taking , we obtain
for all , which implies
for all positive . On the other hand, applying (2) to (1) gives
for all , which implies (3) also for all negative .
We have shown above that implies for all . Hence we may assume that is either positive or negative. By taking in (2) and applying (3), we obtain . Both and would lead to contradiction, hence and the only non-zero solution is thus .
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