SCHOOL OF BASIC SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND

STATISTICS

1. Lagrange Multipliers
Solve:
1. Find the minimum volume for a region bounded by the planes x = 0, y = 0,
z = 0 and a plane tangent to the ellipsoid
x2 y 2 z 2
+ + =1
a2 b2 c2
at a point in the first octant.
2. Suppose a music company sells two types of speakers. The profit for selling x
speakers of style A and y speakers of style B is modeled by
f (x, y) = x3 + y 3 − 5xy.
The company can’t manufacture more than k speakers total in a given month
for some constant k > 5. Show that the maximum profit is
k 2 (k − 5)
4
df
and show that λ =
dk
3. a) Find the maximum value of f (x, y, z) = xyz subject to x + y + z = 1 with
x > 0, y > 0 and z > 0. From the above, conclude that
√ x+y+z
3
xyz ≤
3
The expression on the left is called the geometric mean of x, y and z
while the expression on the right is the more familiar arithmetic mean.
b) Generalize the last result in two ways. First, show that the geometric mean
of any three positive numbers does not exceed the arithmetic mean. Then,
show that the geometric mean of any number of positive numbers does not
exceed the arithmetic mean.
4. Show that the maximum value of the function
(ax + by + c)2
f (x, y) =
x2 + y 2 + 1
is a2 + b2 + c2 .
Hint: One method for attacking this problem is to use the Cauchy-Schwarz
Inequality:
|u · v| ≤ ||u||||v||