Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematical-methods-ii-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2019/3/solution

The real logarithm restricts the domain to . Differentiating gives
Since cannot vanish in the domain, a stationary point requires . The logarithm is strictly increasing, so this equation has exactly one solution:
The second derivative is , giving . In fact is negative below and positive above it, so the point is the unique global minimum on . The boundary value is not an additional stationary point, since the original function is not defined there.

New to topics? Read the docs here!