Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/prelims/mathematics-iii/3/c/solution

For , the gradient never vanishes on the circle. The Lagrange multiplier equations are
If , the two possibilities are . If , then , and the first equation gives . Combining this with yields
Put
Both and are positive, giving the other four points and . To classify all six, restrict to the circle by eliminating :
Its derivatives are and . In the interior, and . At either endpoint ; along the circle, has a strict local minimum at the left endpoint and a strict local maximum at the right endpoint. Consequently the six constrained extrema are
The circle is a compact set, so the extreme value theorem guarantees that its global minimum and global maximum occur among these six points. Their values give the corrected sharp bound
The printed lower bound is false. A particularly short counterexample is
The sole local minimum in part (a), , has value , larger than values on this circle; it is therefore not a global minimum. In fact , so has no global minimum on the plane.
Figure 1.
All six extrema on the constraint circle and the corrected minimum of the restricted polynomial
. Details.

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