FrankXie
Active Member
Re: HSC 2014 4U Marathon - Advanced Level
Are you sure? Your reasoning was quite wrong. (a+b) times a positive number=2, thus you deduce a+b less than 2?These problems belong in another thread, which is just called the 4u marathon. anyways, a^3 + b^3 can be factoed to (a+b)(a^2-ab + b^2) =2
But from AM GM, a^2 + b^2 > 2ab > ab (for a,b>0). Hence the second factor is positive.
Thus (a+b) multiplied by a positive number equals to 2, meaning that a+b is less than 2.