For part (a), we determine g(y) for any y≥6. Applying the functional equation we have:
g(g(y))=y+33y.
Also, as 2<y+33y<3 we can apply g to each side and apply the second condition to get:
g(g(g(y)))=g(y+33y)=21(y+33y+1)=2y+64y+3.
But also from the opening condition applied to g(y):
g(g(g(y)))=g(y)+33g(y).
Equating the reciprocal of these last two expressions yields:
31+g(y)1=4y+32y+6
whence:
g(y)=2y+1512y+9.
Substituting y=2021 gives:
g(2021)=2×2021+1512×2021+9.
For part (b) we note from the second condition that g(3)=2 and g(2)=3/2. Playing around recursively, we have:
g(23)g(56)g(1)=g(g(2))=2+33×2=56=g(g(23))=3/2+33×3/2=1=g(g(56))=6/5+33×6/5=76.
We spot a pattern and conjecture that, for n=2,3,4,…
g(n6)=n+16.
The proof is by induction; the result holds by direct computation for n=2 and n=3. For general n, we assume the result for n−1 and we have
g(n6)=g(g(n−16))=6/(n−1)+33×6/(n−1)=6+3n−318=n+16.
The result is now proved. Substituting n=6×2021=12126 gives:
g(20211)=121276.