Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 ia Paper 1 5C Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
For , the squared Euclidean norm of the orthogonal projection residual is nonnegative:This proves the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality . Equality holds exactly when is a scalar multiple of . If , equality is automatic. Equivalently, equality means the two vectors are linearly dependent, including the cases with a zero vector.
For a point equidistant from the coordinate vertices,must be independent of . Thus all are equal, and their sum is one. The centroid is thereforeFor every in the base probability simplex, the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality gives . Equality forces the same coordinates as . Thus is the unique closest point of a probability simplex to the origin.