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59th Ukrainian National Mathematical Olympiad

Ukraine algebra

Problem

It is known that nonzero real numbers , , satisfy the condition . What value can the expression be equal to?
Solution
Since , we can do the following transformation of the given expression:

Thus, there are no zeros among the three terms on the left-hand side, and it turned out that the sum of two is equal to the third modulo, that is, they can not be the sides of a non-degenerate triangle. The resulting contradiction completes the proof.
Final answer
0

Techniques

Polynomial operationsSymmetric functions