Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/ii/paper-1/2h/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2021 ii Paper 1 2H Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The set is compact because is closed and bounded, and the productis continuous. By the extreme value theorem, has a maximizer. Since meets the interior of the nonnegative orthant , some feasible product is positive, so every maximizer lies in .
On , maximizing is equivalent to maximizingThe Hessian of iswhich is negative definite. Thus is a strictly concave function, and it has at most one maximizer on the convex set . Denote this unique point by .
For any , the line segmentlies in . Since is maximal at , its right derivative there is nonpositive:ThereforeThis is the supporting inequality for the product maximizer on a compact convex subset of the positive orthant.
Suppose now that is invariant under cyclic coordinate permutation. That permutation preserves the product, so uniqueness forces it to fix . Hencefor some . More explicitly,Indeed, cyclic symmetry averaging puts the diagonal point with coordinate equal to the mean of any back in , while the preceding inequality with gives .
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