Mathematics Department Stanford University Math 51H Homework 1

Due at TA section, Friday Sept. 27 Before starting this assignment, please read the section on Homework at http://math51h.stanford.edu/51h-info.pdf

1. Explain why the following proof of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality |x y| x, y Rn , is not valid:

y , where

Proof: If either x or y is zero, then the inequality |x y| x y is trivially correct because both sides are zero. If neither x nor y is zero, then from lecture x y = x y cos , where, as discussed in lecture, is the angle between x and y. Hence |x y| = x y | cos | x y .
Note: We shall give a detailed discussion of the function cos later; for the moment you should of course assume that cos is well-dened and has its usual properties (e.g., it is 2 -periodic, has absolute value 1 and takes each value in [1, 1] exactly once if we restrict to the interval [0, ], etc.). Thus | cos | 1 (used in the last step above) is certainly correct.

2. Use mathematical induction to check that

n 3 j =1 j

= n2 (n + 1)2 /4 for n = 1, 2, . . ..

Note: The principle of mathematical induction is one of the basic properties of the natural numbers N = {1, 2, . . .}, and we shall use it frequently; it says that if a subset P N has the properties (a) 1 P , and (b) n P n + 1 P for each n = 1, 2, . . ., then P = N. Slightly more concretely, that is the same as saying that if Pn is a (true or false) proposition for each n = 1, 2, . . . and if (a) P1 is true, and (b) for each n we are able to check that Pn+1 is true whenever Pn is true, then Pn is true for all n = 1, 2, . . ..

3. Prove that there exists a cubic polynomial ax3 + bx2 + cx + d whose graph passes through the 4 points (1, 0), (0, 1), (1, 2), (2, 5). Is this cubic polynomial the unique such? 4. Prove that (i) 2 is irrational (i.e. not rational), and (ii) If x, y rational, x = 0, and z irrational, then y + xz, y + x/z are both irrational. (Recall that x rational means that integers p, q with q = 0 such that x = p/q .)
Hint for (i): If 2 is rational, then we can write 2 = p/q , where p, q are positive integers without common factors. Note: 2 is dened to be the positive real number a such that a2 = 2; well discuss the existence of such square roots in week 2 as part of our discussion of the real numbers; for the moment you should just assume it exists without discussion.

5. (In every open interval both rationals and irrationals.)

If a, b R with a < b, prove:

(a) There is a rational r (a, b). (b) There is an irrational c (a, b). Hint: Use part (a) and Q.4. (c) (a, b) contains innitely many rationals and innitely many irrationals.
Hint for (a): Start by selecting an integer q > 0 such that 1 < b a (i.e. q > 1/(b a)), so that (qa, qb) is an interval q of length greater than 1; you can of course use the fact that the real numbers can be written as the disjoint union n{0,1,2,...,} [n, n + 1) (which is a restatement of the important general fact every real x can be uniquely written in the form x = n + y with n an integer and y [0, 1)such n is referred to as the integer part of x).

6. By examining the proof of the triangle inequality x + y x + y given in lecture (recall that proof began with the identity x + y 2 = x 2 + y 2 + 2x y), prove that equality holds in the triangle inequality either at least one of x, y is 0 or x, y = 0 and y = x with > 0. 7. (Another proof of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality.) If a = (a1 , . . . , an ), b = (b1 , . . . , bn ) Rn , prove n 2 b 2 (a b)2 , and hence prove |a b| a b . 2 the identity 1 i,j =1 (ai bj aj bi ) = a 2
Note: For any given aij , i, j = 1, . . . , n,
n i,j =1

aij means

n j =1 (

n i=1

aij )), which is the same as

n i=1 (

n j =1

aij ))

8. Using the dot product, prove, for any vectors x, y Rn : (a) The parallelogram law: x y 2 + x + y 2 = 2( x 2 + y 2 ) (b) The law of cosines: x y 2 = x 2 + y 2 2 x y cos , assuming x, y are non-zero and is the angle between x and y as discussed in lecture. (c) Give a geometric interpretion of identities (a),(b) (i.e. describe what (a) is saying about the parallelogram determined by x, yi.e. OACB where OA = x, OB = y, OC = x + y, and what (b) is saying about the triangle determined by x and yi.e. OAB , where OA = x, OB = y).