Monday, May 18, 2009

Missing Algebra?

Coming down after your intermediate algebra final? Don't know how you are going to fill up the summer hours without all the homework problems? YofX is here to help. Here's a problem to both reinforce and extend your algebraic superpowers.
Given distinct positive real numbers, x,y,z such that is true. Write x,y,z in increasing order from left to right, and justify your answer algebraically.
Problem stolen from Awesome Math camp's application. Their camps look really fun. I wish I was 15 again!

5 comments:

fake said...

Lee found an important omission in the statement of the problem. It is given that x,y,and z are also positive. I've corrected the main post. Solving should be a little easier now.

Tinyc Tim said...

This problem looked like it might be related to the earlier problem posted here involving breaking up a "unit stick" (see Probability Problem). Please visit Awesome!

fake said...

Lee, this looks really interesting. I'm struggling to read that a bit. What settings did you scan it in with?

Tinyc Tim said...

 
Sorry about that. I've rescanned it at 300 ppi. Now, if only my handwriting were legible, we'd be all set ...

fake said...

That looks great. No need to apologize for your handwriting. Mine could certainly give yours a run for the money.