Let be a sequence of non-negative integers, where is a positive integer. Let
Prove that
where is the greatest integer less than or equal to , and for (and ). When does equality hold?
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
Assume without loss of generality that , and let . Let be any (fixed) index for which .
Our inequality is equivalent to proving that
Now for , is the product of factors. For example, . The left side of inequality (1) therefore is the product of factors, all of which are greater than . Similarly, the right side of (1) is the product of factors, all of which are at most . Since , . This proves the inequality.
Equality in (1) holds if and only if either:
(i) , that is, both sides of (1) are the empty product, which occurs if and only if ; or
(ii) and , that is, the only factors on either side of (1) are 's, which occurs if and only if for all .
Solution 2
Assume without loss of generality that . Let and . Our proof is by induction on .
We first do the case or separately. Then and for some and . In this case we have , so the inequality to be proven is just , which is obvious. Equality holds if and only if either , that is, ; or if , that is, and .
So assume that and that the inequality holds for all sequences with smaller values of , or with the same value of and smaller values of . Then the sequence
though not necessarily in non-decreasing order any more, does have either a smaller value of , or the same value of and a smaller value of , but in any case has the same value of . Thus, by induction and since ,
which completes the proof. Equality cannot hold in this case.