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HSC 2014 MX2 Marathon ADVANCED (archive) (4 Viewers)

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seanieg89

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

An attempt at a more formal solution:





Differentiability doesn't imply continuous differentiability (which is why I brought up the point). (Consider f(x)=(x^2)sin(1/x) at 0 as a counterexample).

So something is going wrong in your proof of this first assertion. (For starters, I don't follow your h=x-c line...it seems dodgy. More importantly though, the last equality before your "therefore" seems to use the assumption of continuity, the very thing you are trying to prove.)

(There would also be sign issues in the end of your argument, taking absolute values will reverse the inequality if the sides are both negative for example.)
 

mathing

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

I believe what we can do is either assume that f is continuous on [a, b] and apply the mean value theorem to know that there exists a a <= c <= b such that f'(c) = (f(b) - f(a)/(b-a) and as f' is non constant we take take that point to prove the inequality.

If we don't want to assume that f is continuous on [a, b] differentiability implies continuity on (a,b) so we just take a smaller closed interval that contains the non constant point of f' and use the same reasoning.
 

Sy123

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level



 

seanieg89

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

I believe what we can do is either assume that f is continuous on [a, b] and apply the mean value theorem to know that there exists a a <= c <= b such that f'(c) = (f(b) - f(a)/(b-a) and as f' is non constant we take take that point to prove the inequality.

If we don't want to assume that f is continuous on [a, b] differentiability implies continuity on (a,b) so we just take a smaller closed interval that contains the non constant point of f' and use the same reasoning.
We definitely need to assume continuity on [a,b] for the claim to be true. Otherwise take a continuous function g on [a,b] that is differentiable with bounded derivative in (a,b) and then choose f to agree with g on [a,b) and make f(b) really large to get a counterexample.

I also don't quite follow what you mean by: "and as f' is non constant we take take that point to prove the inequality". The claim is that an interior point exists such that strict inequality is obtained, it is not quite as simple as just choosing one of the mean value theorem points, since at these points we only have equality.

The essential point is that since f' is nonconstant, if the claim wasn't true then all interior points c would satisfy the (weak) reversed inequality, and at lease one point p would satisfy the strict reversed inequality. If we look at the definition of the derivative this means that "f will not change fast enough" near p to give you the full difference |f(b)-f(a)| given that we have a weak upper bound on how quickly f can change elsewhere. All of this can be formalised in a few lines using just the triangle inequality and the mean value theorem.

(Use of the Mean Value Theorem here is essential. Without further assumptions on the regularity of f (absolute continuity is necessary and sufficient), it is impossible to integrate f').
 
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seanieg89

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

Sy probably just wanted the sin(x) solution, but usually when you are asked to solve a functional equation like this, you need to find ALL solutions to the given equation.

You should try to prove that all solutions to this problem are of the form c*sin(x). (It comes quite quickly from the functional equation and the assumption of differentiability.)
 

Davo_01

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

Sy probably just wanted the sin(x) solution, but usually when you are asked to solve a functional equation like this, you need to find ALL solutions to the given equation.

You should try to prove that all solutions to this problem are of the form c*sin(x). (It comes quite quickly from the functional equation and the assumption of differentiability.)
Oh right, I see it! Thanks for letting me know :) Il update it now
 

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

 
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seanieg89

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

I really don't think this is true...the last RHS term on its own grows WAY faster than the LHS does. Also, a quick check shows this is not true for n=1.
 

Davo_01

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

I really don't think this is true...the last RHS term on its own grows WAY faster than the LHS does. Also, a quick check shows this is not true for n=1.
Right i made a typo my bad, i fixed it the LHS was meant to be squared, thanks for pointing out the error
 

RealiseNothing

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

Find the amount of times 0 appears between 1 and
 

Sy123

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seanieg89

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

Here is a bit of general calculus (for the uni students here, this idea is important in extending elements of Sobolev spaces beyond the boundary of a domain in a way that's pretty smooth).

(Recall that "f is bounded" means there is a positive M such that |f(x)| =< M for all x in the domain.)

Let f be a real valued function defined on the non-negative reals which is bounded and continuous, and has continuous second derivative over the positive reals. (And this continuity extends to the second order one-sided derivative at 0, which we assume exists).

Prove that there exists a function g satisfying the same properties that is defined on the whole real line and agrees with f at non-negative reals.
 
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mathing

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Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level

Here is a bit of general calculus (for the uni students here, this idea is important in extending elements of Sobolev spaces beyond the boundary of a domain in a way that's pretty smooth).

(Recall that "f is bounded" means there is a positive M such that |f(x)| =< M for all x in the domain.)

Let f be a real valued function defined on the non-negative reals which is bounded and continuous, and has continuous second derivative over the positive reals.

Prove that there exists a function g satisfying the same properties that is defined on the whole real line and agrees with f at non-negative reals.
Can we define g(x) = f(x) for x >=0 and g(x) = f(-x) for x < 0?
 
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