Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2024 / Paper 1 / 14 / c

The scaling relation says that $z$ is a homogeneous function of degree $n$. Fix $(x,y)$ and differentiate the identity with respect to the positive parameter $\lambda$. The chain rule givesSetting $\lambda =1$ proves the Euler theorem for homogeneous functions identityDifferentiate once more with respect to $\lambda$, using equality of the mixed partial derivatives for the assumed twice continuously differentiable function:At $\lambda =1$ this is the second-order Euler identity for homogeneous functions:The repeated parameter differentiation accounts for the factor $n(n-1)$, rather than $n^2$.