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AustriaMO2011

Austria 2011 algebra

Problem

Let , be positive real numbers such that Prove that When does equality hold?
Solution
We have Therefore we can rewrite the inequality in the following way: The last line is an immediate consequence of the AM-GM inequality. In the last step, equality holds exactly for , i.e. . Taking into account the equality we obtain which is indeed an admissible case of equality and thus the only one.
Final answer
Equality holds at x = y = 1

Techniques

QM-AM-GM-HM / Power Mean