Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-year-1-of-the-computer-science-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2019/discrete-mathematics-continuous-mathematics-and-probability/6/b/solution
Past exam of the year 1 of the computer science course of the University of Oxford 2019 Discrete mathematics, continuous mathematics, and probability 6 b Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
If , the objective is zero at every feasible point, so every point of the ellipsoid is a minimizer. Suppose now . A minimum cannot be interior: a sufficiently small step in direction would remain feasible and decrease the objective. The boundary is active.
Forstationarity gives . A positive-definite symmetric matrix is invertible, and the minimizing sign has . Enforcing the boundary gives
For global optimality, use the inner product . The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality givesThe proposed point attains the negative of this bound. Thus the minimum is , and equality in the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, together with the sign and boundary conditions, makes this minimizer unique when .
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