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Bernoulli's inequality
Inequality about exponentiations of ''1+x'' From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In mathematics, Bernoulli's inequality (named after Jacob Bernoulli) is an inequality that approximates exponentiations of . It is often employed in real analysis. It has several useful variants:[1]

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Integer exponent
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Real exponent
- for every real number and . The inequality is strict if and .
- for every real number and .
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History
Jacob Bernoulli first published the inequality in his treatise "Positiones Arithmeticae de Seriebus Infinitis" (Basel, 1689), where he used the inequality often.[3]
According to Joseph E. Hofmann, Über die Exercitatio Geometrica des M. A. Ricci (1963), p. 177, the inequality is actually due to Sluse in his Mesolabum (1668 edition), Chapter IV "De maximis & minimis".[3]
Proof for integer exponent
Summarize
Perspective
The first case has a simple inductive proof:
Suppose the statement is true for :
Then it follows that
Bernoulli's inequality can be proved for case 2, in which is a non-negative integer and , using mathematical induction in the following form:
- we prove the inequality for ,
- from validity for some r we deduce validity for .
For ,
is equivalent to which is true.
Similarly, for we have
Now suppose the statement is true for :
Then it follows that
since as well as . By the modified induction we conclude the statement is true for every non-negative integer .
By noting that if , then is negative gives case 3.
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Generalizations
Generalization of exponent
The exponent can be generalized to an arbitrary real number as follows: if , then
for or , and
for .
This generalization can be proved by convexity (see below) or by comparing derivatives. The strict versions of these inequalities require and .
The case can also be derived from the case by noting that (using the main case result) and by using the fact that is monotonic. We can conclude that for , therefore for . The leftover case is verified separately.
Generalization of base
Instead of the inequality holds also in the form where are real numbers, all greater than , all with the same sign. Bernoulli's inequality is a special case when . This generalized inequality can be proved by mathematical induction.
Strengthened version
The following theorem presents a strengthened version of the Bernoulli inequality, incorporating additional terms to refine the estimate under specific conditions. Let the expoent be a nonnegative integer and let be a real number with if is odd and greater than 1. Then
with equality if and only if or .[4]
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Related inequalities
The following inequality estimates the -th power of from the other side. For any real numbers and with , one has
where 2.718.... This may be proved using the inequality
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Alternative form
An alternative form of Bernoulli's inequality for and is:
This can be proved (for any integer ) by using the formula for geometric series: (using )
or equivalently
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Alternative proofs
Summarize
Perspective
Arithmetic and geometric means
An elementary proof for and can be given using weighted AM-GM.
Let be two non-negative real constants. By weighted AM-GM on with weights respectively, we get
Note that
and
so our inequality is equivalent to
After substituting (bearing in mind that this implies ) our inequality turns into
which is Bernoulli's inequality for .
The case can be derived from in the same way as the case can be derived from , see above "Generalization of exponent".
Geometric series
Bernoulli's inequality
1 |
is equivalent to
2 |
and by the formula for geometric series (using y = 1 + x) we get
3 |
which leads to
4 |
Now if then by monotony of the powers each summand , and therefore their sum is greater and hence the product on the LHS of (4).
If then by the same arguments and thus all addends are non-positive and hence so is their sum. Since the product of two non-positive numbers is non-negative, we get again (4).
Binomial theorem
One can prove Bernoulli's inequality for x ≥ 0 using the binomial theorem. It is true trivially for r = 0, so suppose r is a positive integer. Then Clearly and hence as required.
Using convexity
For the function is strictly convex. Therefore, for holds and the reversed inequality is valid for and .
Another way of using convexity is to re-cast the desired inequality to for real and real . This inequality can be proved using the fact that the function is concave, and then using Jensen's inequality in the form to give: which is the desired inequality.
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Notes
References
External links
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