Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2008 Paper 1 20 b Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
For real square-integrable , nonnegativity of gives a quadratic in the real number . If , choose to obtainIf , then almost everywhere and the same inequality is immediate. This proves the integral Cauchy-Schwarz inequality.
Put and . The forward speed satisfies , so . The change of variables gives . Apply the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality to and the constant function one:Equality holds exactly when is constant almost everywhere. Equivalently, the time and distance averages of speed satisfy , which identifies the excess as a measure of speed variation.