Let , and be positive integers such that
If , prove that the polynomial
has no positive roots.
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
We first prove that, for ,
with equality if and only if . It is clear that equality occurs if .
If , the AM-GM inequality applied to a single copy of and copies of 1 yields
Since , the inequality is strict for .
Multiplying the inequalities (1) for yields
with equality iff for all . But this implies , which is not possible. Hence for all , and has no positive roots.
Solution 2
We will prove that, in fact, all coefficients of the polynomial are non-positive, and at least one of them is negative, which implies that for .
Indeed, since for all and for some (since ), we have , so the coefficient of in is . Moreover, the coefficient of in is negative for .
For , the coefficient of in is
which is non-positive iff
We will prove (2) by induction on . For it is an equality because the constant term of is , and if , (2) becomes . For , if (2) is true for a given , we have
and it suffices to prove that
which is equivalent to
Since there are ways to choose a fraction from to factor out, every term in the right hand side appears exactly times in the product
Hence all terms in the right hand side cancel out.