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Algebra Difficulty 6.3 National Olympiad Prove it Taiwan

Suppose function f:[0,)[0,)f: [0, \infty) \to [0, \infty) satisfies
(1) x,y0\forall x, y \ge 0, we have f(x)f(y)y2f(x2)+x2f(y2)f(x)f(y) \le y^2 f(\frac{x}{2}) + x^2 f(\frac{y}{2});
(2) 0x1\forall 0 \le x \le 1, f(x)2016f(x) \le 2016.
Prove that f(x)x2f(x) \le x^2 for all x0x \ge 0.

Solution

By (1), and take x=y=0x = y = 0, we have f(0)=0f(0) = 0.

Now, suppose there exists x0>0x_0 > 0 such that f(x0)>x02f(x_0) > x_0^2. By using (1), we have
f(x02)>12x02. f\left(\frac{x_0}{2}\right) > \frac{1}{2}x_0^2.
In fact, by mathematical induction, and use (1) repeatedly, it is easy to show that
f(x02k)>22k2k1x02 f\left(\frac{x_0}{2^k}\right) > 2^{2^k - 2^{k-1}} x_0^2
for all positive integers kk. However, since x0x_0 is a constant, we can choose kk sufficiently large such that x0/2k[0,1]x_0/2^k \in [0, 1] and f(x0/2k)>2016f(x_0/2^k) > 2016, which contradicts (2).

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from zh; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.