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Belarusian Mathematical Olympiad

Belarus algebra

Problem

Let be a quadratic trinomial, and be pairwise distinct real numbers. Given , , , find .
Solution
Answer: . Let . Then Subtracting the second and the third equations from the first one, we have Since are pairwise distinct, we have Subtracting the second equation from the first one, we have . Since , we have . Then it follows from (2) that , and it follows from (1) that . Therefore, , so .
Final answer
ab + bc + ac

Techniques

Symmetric functionsPolynomial operations