Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.5 AIME, harder Prove it

6. (USS 4) IMO{ }^{\mathrm{IMO}} Prove for each triangle ABCA B C the inequality
14<IAIBIClAlBlC827 \frac{1}{4}<\frac{I A \cdot I B \cdot I C}{l_{A} l_{B} l_{C}} \leq \frac{8}{27}
where II is the incenter and lA,lB,lCl_{A}, l_{B}, l_{C} are the lengths of the angle bisectors of ABCA B C.

Solution

6. Let a,b,ca, b, c be sides of the triangle. Let A1A_{1} be the intersection of line AIA I with BCB C. By the known fact, BA1:A1C=c:bB A_{1}: A_{1} C=c: b and AI:IA1=AB:BA1A I: I A_{1}=A B: B A_{1}, hence BA1=acb+cB A_{1}=\frac{a c}{b+c} and AIIA1=ABBA1=b+ca\frac{A I}{I A_{1}}=\frac{A B}{B A_{1}}=\frac{b+c}{a}. Consequently AIlA=b+ca+b+c\frac{A I}{l_{A}}=\frac{b+c}{a+b+c}. Put a=n+p,b=p+m,c=m+na=n+p, b=p+m, c=m+n : it is obvious that m,n,pm, n, p are positive. Our inequality becomes
22T3 22 T^{3}
Remark. The inequalities cannot be improved. In fact, AIBICIlAlBlC\frac{A I \cdot B I \cdot C I}{l_{A} l_{B} l_{C}} is equal to 8/278 / 27 for a=b=ca=b=c, while it can be arbitrarily close to 1/41 / 4 if a=ba=b and cc is sufficiently small.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.