Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 6.7 National olympiad Prove it

Given real numbers a,ba, b and cc such that 0abc0 \leq a \leq b \leq c and a+b+c=1a+b+c=1. Prove that

abba+bccb+acca<14 a b \sqrt{b-a}+b c \sqrt{c-b}+a c \sqrt{c-a}<\frac{1}{4}

Solution

For every xyx \leq y we have by the arithmetic-geometric mean inequality that yxyx+12\sqrt{y-x} \leq \frac{y-x+1}{2} with equality if and only if yx=1y-x=1. Furthermore, we note that 1a=b+c1-a=b+c and the symmetric variants, because a+b+c=1a+b+c=1. If we apply this to the roots on the left side, we get

abba+bccb+accaabba+12+bccb+12+acca+12=12(ab(2b+c)+bc(a+2c)+ca(2c+b))=14(4ab2+4bc2+4ac2+6abc) \begin{aligned} a b \sqrt{b-a}+b c \sqrt{c-b}+a c \sqrt{c-a} & \leq a b \frac{b-a+1}{2}+b c \frac{c-b+1}{2}+a c \frac{c-a+1}{2} \\ & =\frac{1}{2}(a b(2 b+c)+b c(a+2 c)+c a(2 c+b)) \\ & =\frac{1}{4}\left(4 a b^{2}+4 b c^{2}+4 a c^{2}+6 a b c\right) \end{aligned}

where in the last step we have already factored out 14\frac{1}{4} for convenience. Now we note that ab2b3a b^{2} \leq b^{3} and ac2+bc22bc2=2bcc(b2+c2)c=b2c+c3a c^{2}+b c^{2} \leq 2 b c^{2}=2 b c \cdot c \leq (b^{2}+c^{2}) c=b^{2} c+c^{3}. In these inequalities, equality holds respectively if a=ba=b and if a=b=ca=b=c. If we apply this above, we get

4ab2+4bc2+4ac2+6abc3ab2+b3+3bc2+3ac2+b2c+c3+6abca3+b3+c3+3a2b+3ab2+3b2c+3bc2+3a2c+3ac2+6abc=(a+b+c)3=1 \begin{aligned} 4 a b^{2}+4 b c^{2}+4 a c^{2}+6 a b c & \leq 3 a b^{2}+b^{3}+3 b c^{2}+3 a c^{2}+b^{2} c+c^{3}+6 a b c \\ & \leq a^{3}+b^{3}+c^{3}+3 a^{2} b+3 a b^{2}+3 b^{2} c+3 b c^{2}+3 a^{2} c+3 a c^{2}+6 a b c \\ & =(a+b+c)^{3}=1 \end{aligned}

In the last inequality, equality holds only if the terms a3,a2b,b2ca^{3}, a^{2} b, b^{2} c and a2ca^{2} c that we added are all zero. In particular, this implies that a=0a=0 and b2c=0b^{2} c=0, from which it follows due to bcb \leq c that b=0b=0.

It is easy to see that not all equality cases can occur simultaneously. For example, for a=b=0a=b=0, the left side of the original inequality is equal to zero.

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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.