Problem:
Let be the set of all points in the plane. Find all functions such that for all nondegenerate triangles with orthocenter , if , then
Philippine Mathematical Olympiad
Solution
Solution:
Let be the problem assertion. First consider a non-right triangle with orthocenter . Note that in the set , the last point is the orthocenter of the other three. Thus, we can assume WLOG .
By considering , this implies . Since and , this implies equality must hold in both inequalities, and so and .
Denote by the circle with diameter . We prove the following claim.
Claim: If , then for all , we have . In particular, is constant on .
Proof: We split into cases. If , then implies
which implies , contradiction. Thus, , from which implies
The claim then follows.
Now we claim that . Assume for the sake of contradiction that this was not the case. Consider , and let . Let intersect at a second point . Then since , from the claim we get .
Now we have two cases. In the first case, suppose . Then , implying , contradiction. In the second case, we have . This implies , and so
implying , another contradiction. Thus our assumption was wrong, and . This implies for any nondegenerate non-right triangle , and so is constant everywhere (by considering two segments whose diameter circles do not intersect). It is clear that these solutions work.