Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 ib Paper 4 20G Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Each coordinate lies in . Since , , with equality exactly when or . Summing gives . Equality under the simplex constraint forces exactly one coordinate to be one. Thus the minimum is , attained exactly at the vertices of the probability simplex.
For the maximum, is strictly concave on . The Jensen inequality givesStrict concavity makes equality possible exactly when all coordinates agree. Hence the extrema of a concave power sum on a simplex areFor the simplex is a single point, and both descriptions coincide.