AlgebraDifficulty 6.3National olympiadFind the answer
Find the largest positive integer n for which the inequality
abc+1a+b+c+nabc≤25
holds for all a,b,c∈[0,1]. Here 1abc=abc.
A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.
Solution
Let nmax be the sought largest value of n, and let Ea,b,c(n)=abc+1a+b+c+nabc. Then Ea,b,c(m)−Ea,b,c(n)=mabc−nabc and since abc≤1 we clearly have Ea,b,c(m)≥Ea,b,c(n) for m≥n. So if Ea,b,c(n)≥25 for some choice of a,b,c∈[0,1], it must be nmax≤n. We use this remark to determine the upper bound nmax≤3 by plugging some particular values of a,b,c into the given inequality as follows:
For (a,b,c)=(1,1,c),c∈[0,1], inequality (1) implies c+1c+2+nc≤25⇔c+11+nc≤
23. Obviously, every x∈[0;1] is written as nc for some c∈[0;1]. So the last inequality is equivalent to:
For n=4, the left hand side of the above becomes (1−x)(2x4+1−x3−x2−x)=(1−x)(x−1)(2x3+x2−1)=−(1−x)2(2x3+x2−1) which for x=0.9 is negative. Thus, nmax≤3 as claimed.
Now, we shall prove that for n=3 inequality (1) holds for all a,b,c∈[0,1], and this would mean nmax=3. We shall use the following Lemma:
Lemma. For all a,b,c∈[0;1]:a+b+c≤abc+2. Proof of the Lemma: The required result comes by adding the following two inequalities side by side