The American Mathematical Monthly

ISSN: 0002-9890 (Print) 1930-0972 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uamm20

An Entropy Proof of the Arithmetic

Mean–Geometric Mean Inequality

Cole Graham & Tadashi Tokieda

To cite this article: Cole Graham & Tadashi Tokieda (2020) An Entropy Proof of the Arithmetic
Mean–Geometric Mean Inequality, The American Mathematical Monthly, 127:6, 545-546, DOI:
10.1080/00029890.2020.1738827

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00029890.2020.1738827

Published online: 21 May 2020.

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 NOTES
Edited by Vadim Ponomarenko

An Entropy Proof of the

Arithmetic Mean–Geometric Mean
Inequality
Cole Graham and Tadashi Tokieda

Abstract. Many proofs are known for the inequality between the arithmetic mean and the
geometric mean. This note gives a new derivation, interpreting the means as final and initial
values of entropy, and the inequality as the second law of thermodynamics.

Imagine bodies of mass m1 , m2 , . . . having the same specific heat c. Recall that
specific heat is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature, by one degree, of a
unit mass of that material; it is measured in joule/(kelvin · kg). Materials that warm or
cool easily have small c, those that are hard to warm or cool have large c. Write
mi 
pi = , M= mi .
M i

The p’s satisfy 0  pi  1 for all i and i pi = 1. Here is a fact of nature: If those
bodies, from initial temperatures T1 , T2 , . . . , are brought into thermal contact with one
another, then they eventually settle (asymptote) to a common temperature

T  = pi T i .
i

When the ith body changes its temperature by dTi , the heat it receives is cMpi dTi ,
and its entropy changes by

cMpi dTi
dSi = = cMpi d log Ti .
Ti
The first equal sign encodes the definition of entropy—the intake of heat divided by
the absolute temperature. Let us run the process from start to finish. As T  is the final
temperature by the fact above,
 
Sifinish − Sistart = cM pi logT  − pi log Ti .

Summing over all bodies, we get

    
pi
Sifinish − Sistart = cM pi logT  − log Ti
i i i i

doi.org/10.1080/00029890.2020.1738827
MSC: Primary 26D15, Secondary 82C05; 80A20

June–July 2020] NOTES 545

   p
= cM logT  − log Ti i .
i

Now the second law of thermodynamics says that the total entropy of the system must
increase: the left-hand side is positive. Hence so is the right-hand side, which implies
p p
p1 T 1 + p2 T 2 + · · ·  T 1 2 × T 2 2 × · · · .

The sharp case is when all the initial temperatures were equal already

T1 = T2 = · · ·

for this is the only case that involves no heat exchange.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. The work of CG was supported by the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation and by
NSF grant DGE-1656518.

Department of Mathematics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2125, USA

grahamca@stanford.edu
tokieda@stanford.edu

546 
c THE MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA [Monthly 127