Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2012/paper-1/16/c/solution

At the origin the Hessian matrix is
Thus the second-derivative test gives a saddle point. Its opposite signs can also be checked without a test formula: for , whereas for . Both types of values occur arbitrarily close to the zero value at the origin, excluding either a local maximum or a local minimum.

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