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PrintIranian Mathematical Olympiad
Iran algebra
Problem
Let be a polynomial of degree at least with nonnegative coefficients. Find all functions such that for every
Solution
Let , so we have Hence for every we have There exist some such that is positive. Otherwise must be constant. So where (constant). By definition of we get But coefficients of all are positive, therefore as so for large values , which contradicts the assumption that for every . Therefore function is periodic because according to equation (2) for each , is a period for . (We can choose such that .) Therefore is a period for for every . Since is a polynomial of degree at least two, is not constant and is a function of such that its image contains all numbers greater than a fixed positive real number and this implies that is constant for every and so for some constant . Now we replace function by in (1)
Final answer
f(x) = x for all positive real x
Techniques
Functional EquationsPolynomials