Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2010/paper-2/13/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2010 Paper 2 13 a Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
As printed, the function is undefined at the origin. For , its gradient isThe scalar prefactor is positive, and , so this gradient never vanishes. Thus there are no stationary points on the stated domain. Its infimum is three, approached as , but that value is not attained there.
If the intended definition includes the natural extension , that extension has a unique strict global minimum at the origin, with value three. Indeed, off zero, and proves differentiability at zero with zero gradient. More strongly, subtracting three gives the radial Gaussian flat function: every derivative of that difference vanishes at the origin. The vanishing Hessian matrix does not turn this minimum into an inflection point. These are two different domain interpretations; the extension must be stated rather than silently inserted.
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