Functional Equation Mood II

Algebra Level 4

What can be said about the number of all possible solutions of the following functional equation? f ( x ) + f ( x 2 ) = x \large f(x)+f\left(\frac x2 \right)=x

A unique solution. No solution. A finite number of solutions that is greater than one. Infinite solutions

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3 solutions

Arturo Presa
Aug 18, 2019

It is easy to see that any function of the form f ( x ) = 2 3 x + g ( x ) f(x)=\frac{2}{3}x+g(x) is a solution of the given functional equation, where g ( x ) + g ( 1 2 x ) = 0. ( ) g(x)+g(\frac{1}{2}x)=0.\quad\quad(*) It can be proved that there are infinitely many possible functions g ( x ) . g(x). For example, for any real number c 0 , c\neq 0, we can define a function g c g_c as a piecewise function in the following way: g c ( 2 n ) = ( 1 ) n c , g_c(2^n)=(-1)^n c, for any integer n , n, and g c ( x ) = 0 , g_c(x)=0, if x x is any real number that cannot be represented as 2 n , 2^n, where n n is any integer number. It is obvious that any g c g_c satisfies the equation ( ) (*) and the number of possible function of this type is infinite, because if c 1 c 2 , c_1\neq c_2, then g c 1 g c 2 . g_{c_1}\neq g_{c_2}.

Interesting, but a real number can be zero.

sunil Krishnatry - 1 year, 6 months ago
Sunil Krishnatry
Nov 30, 2019

For any problem there’s always infinite amount of solutions. Some of us just can’t find it.

Wahyu Adi
Sep 7, 2020

Infinite solution, because the variable x can be any numbers, any random numbers.

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