Determine the smallest real number satisfying
for all positive integers and all positive real numbers that add up to at most .
Solution
The required minimum is . To show that is an upper bound, let be a positive integer, and let be positive real numbers such that . If , then the sum in question is non-positive, so let , and let be the largest positive integer such that . Then
since the sum in the middle is the lower Darboux-Riemann sum of the cosine, corresponding to the subdivision , and the cosine is decreasing on .
To show that is the least upper bound, for every positive integer , let . Since and
the conclusion follows.
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