Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematical-methods-ii-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015-resit/5/i/solution
Past exam of the mathematical methods II course of the University of Oxford 2015 resit 5 i Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
For a twice continuously differentiable function , first check the stationary-point condition . Write its Hessian matrix as , with , and . The second-derivative test uses : if and , the point is a strict local minimum; if and , it is a strict local maximum; if , it is a saddle point. If , the quadratic test is inconclusive and higher-order terms or a direct argument are needed.
For , the first derivatives vanish at the origin andThus . Directly, for nearby nonzero , while for nearby nonzero . The presence of both increasing and decreasing directions confirms the Hessian matrix classification.
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