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PrintSlovenija 2008
Slovenia 2008 algebra
Problem
Find all functions , such that for all real and .
Solution
If we get . So, is a linear function of the form for some real . Inserting this into the functional equation we see that for all we have , so Now, let to see that for all , so . Under this condition the above equality becomes or, equivalently, , which then implies , since this last equality has to hold for all and . We have shown that . Using this expression for in the initial functional equation, we see that the left-hand side is equal to and the right-hand side becomes The two sides are equal for all and , so is the (only) solution to our equation.
Final answer
f(x) = x - 1
Techniques
Functional Equations