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PrintBrazilian Math Olympiad
Brazil algebra
Problem
Find all functions such that for every real .
Solution
First, is bijective because, plugging , we get ; spans all real numbers (so is surjective) and (so is injective). Choose and such that . By injectivity, Now, set : . Let , so that . If , setting we get and by surjectivity for all . This function doesn't work (by testing), so can't be 0. So and plugging in , we obtain (recall that ): Now set : . Now we find all real numbers such that . If there is only one possible value for , we are almost done because and by testing the function, . Let be such that (it exists because is surjective). Plug and : recalling that , By injectivity, because we already proved that . So there is only one value for , namely, . Then, we're done: the only function is .
Final answer
f(x) = x + 1
Techniques
Injectivity / surjectivityExistential quantifiers