Maths Olympiad Prep

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Algebra Difficulty 5.8 AIME, harder Prove it

For example, prove that for any numbers a,b,ca, b, c greater than 1, we have 2(logbaa+b+logcbb+c+logacc+a)9a+b+c2\left(\frac{\log _{b} a}{a+b}+\frac{\log _{c} b}{b+c}+\frac{\log _{a} c}{c+a}\right) \geqslant \frac{9}{a+b+c}.

Solution

Prove that note, logba,logab,logac\log _{b} a, \log _{a} b, \log _{a} c are all greater than 0, and their product equals 1. Thus, by the AM-GM inequality, we have
logbaa+b+logcbb+c+logacc+a3logbalogcblogac(a+b)(b+c)(c+a)3=3(a+b)(b+c)(c+a)39(a+b)+(b+c)+(c+a)=129a+b+c, \begin{aligned} & \frac{\log _{b} a}{a+b}+\frac{\log _{c} b}{b+c}+\frac{\log _{a} c}{c+a} \geqslant 3 \sqrt[3]{\frac{\log _{b} a \cdot \log _{c} b \cdot \log _{a} c}{(a+b)(b+c)(c+a)}} \\ = & \frac{3}{\sqrt[3]{(a+b)(b+c)(c+a)}} \geqslant \frac{9}{(a+b)+(b+c)+(c+a)}=\frac{1}{2} \cdot \frac{9}{a+b+c}, \end{aligned}

Therefore, 2(logbaa+b+logcbb+c+logacc+a)9a+b+c2\left(\frac{\log _{b} a}{a+b}+\frac{\log _{c} b}{b+c}+\frac{\log _{a} c}{c+a}\right) \geqslant \frac{9}{a+b+c}.

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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.