Evan Chen (April 30, 2014) A Brief Introduction to Olympiad Inequalities

Cauchy can be rewritten as

x21 x22 x2 (x1 + x2 + · · · + xn )2

+ + ··· + n .
y1 y2 yn y1 + · · · + yn
This form it is often called Titu’s Lemma in the United States.
Cauchy and Hölder have at least two uses:

1. eliminating radicals,

2. eliminating fractions.

Let us look at some examples.

Example 3.4 (IMO 2001)

Prove X a
p 1.
cyc a2 + 8bc

Proof. By Holder
!1 !2
X 3 X a 3

a(a2 + 8bc) p (a + b + c)
2
a + 8bc
cyc cyc
P
So it suffices to prove (a + b + c)3 cyc a(a
2 + 8bc) = a3 + b3 + c3 + 24abc. Does this
look familiar?

In this problem, we used Hölder to clear the square roots in the denominator.

Example 3.5 (Balkan)

1 1 1 27
Prove a(b+c) + b(c+a) + c(a+b) 2(a+b+c)2
.

Proof. Again by Holder,

!1 !1 !1
X 3 X 3 X 1 3

a b+c 1 + 1 + 1 = 3.
cyc cyc cyc
a(b + c)

Example 3.6 (JMO 2012)

P 3 +5b3
Prove cyc a3a+b 3 2 2 2
2 a +b +c .

Proof. We use Cauchy (Titu) to obtain

X a3 X (a2 )2 (a2 + b2 + c2 )2
= P .
cyc
3a + b cyc
3a2 + ab 2
cyc 3a + ab

We can easily prove this is at least 14 (a2 +b2 +c2 ) (recall a2 +b2 +c2 is the “biggest” sum, so
P 5b3 5 2 2 2
we knew in advance this method would work). Similarly cyc 3a+b 4 (a + b + c ).