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I am stuck on figuring out why the following function is a decreasing function when I read a paper. The function is following

$f(x) = \frac{c^x-c\cdot x+x-1}{2^x-x-1}$, where $1<c<2$, and the independent variable $x$ is on interval $(2,+\infty)$, i.e. $2<x<+\infty$.

I have plotted the function curves of f(x) with different c, and found that it seems to be monotonic function. However, it is too hard to me to prove it.

The function curves of f(x) with different c is here: function curves of f(x)

The first derivative of $f(x)$ is by the following: \begin{equation} f'(x)={\frac {{c}^{x}\ln \left( c \right) -c+1}{{2}^{x}-x-1}}-{\frac { \left( {c}^{x}-cx+x-1 \right) \left( {2}^{x}\ln \left( 2 \right) -1 \right) }{ \left( {2}^{x}-x-1 \right) ^{2}}} \end{equation}

And the second derivative of $f(x)$ is as follows: \begin{equation} \begin{split} f''(x)&= {\frac {{c}^{x} \left( \ln \left( c \right) \right) ^{2}}{{2}^{x}-x- 1}}-2\,{\frac { \left( {c}^{x}\ln \left( c \right) -c+1 \right) \left( {2}^{x}\ln \left( 2 \right) -1 \right) }{ \left( {2}^{x}-x-1 \right) ^{2}}}\\&+2\,{\frac { \left( {c}^{x}-cx+x-1 \right) \left( {2}^ {x}\ln \left( 2 \right) -1 \right) ^{2}}{ \left( {2}^{x}-x-1 \right) ^{3}}}\\&-{\frac { \left( {c}^{x}-cx+x-1 \right) {2}^{x} \left( \ln \left( 2 \right) \right) ^{2}}{ \left( {2}^{x}-x-1 \right) ^{2}}} \end{split} \end{equation}

FlyFish
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  • You say decreasing function in the title -- you mean the same thing in the body of the question, correct? "why the following function is a DECREASING function when I read a paper". Also, do you need to know that the function is decreasing for ALL x? Or just asymptotically (for all x greater than some certain value)? – Chill2Macht May 13 '16 at 01:22
  • Some modifications have been made in the posts to make it more clear. If anyone has any problem, I'll be glad to get it. – FlyFish May 13 '16 at 01:29
  • Differentiate and it will probably come out. Tedious though. – user434180 May 13 '16 at 01:57
  • Put the first derivative over a common denominator; it suffices to show the numerator is always negative. The most significant term in that numerator will be $(2c)^x \ln\frac x2$, which is negative, and that certainly shows that it's eventually negative, at least. – Greg Martin May 13 '16 at 02:49

1 Answers1

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The derivative function results from WolframAlpha makes it a bit difficult to interpret the behavior of this set of functions, which does have a subtle issue that needs to be handled carefully.

It is helpful to start with looking at the asymptotic behavior, where things are simpler. It is clear, as $ \ x \ $ tends to positive infinity, that this function tends to $ \ \left( \frac{c}{2} \right)^x \ $ , which is an exponentially-decaying function for $ \ 1 \ < \ c \ < \ 2 \ $ .

If we look at the derivative of this, we have $$ \ \frac{[\ln c] \ (2c)^x \ - \ [\ln 2] \ (2c)^x}{2^{2x}} \ \ = \ \ \left(\ln \frac{c}{2} \right) \ \frac{(2c)^x}{2^{2x}} \ \ , $$

for which the logarithmic factor is negative, making the derivative function here negative.

When we work out the derivative of the complete expression of the function, we have

$$ \ \frac{(2^x - x - 1) \ ([\ln c] \ c^x - [c-1])\ - \ (c^x - [c-1] x - 1 ) \ ([\ln 2] 2^x - 1)}{(2^x - x - 1)^2} $$ $$ = \ \ \frac{\ln \frac{c}{2}\ (2c)^x \ - \ ( [1 + x] \ [\ln c] \ - \ 1) \ c^x \ - \ ( [c - 1 + \ln 2] \ + \ [ c - 1 ] \ [\ln 2] \ x \ ) 2^x \ + \ ( c - 2)}{(2^x - x - 1)^2} \ \ , $$

with the first numerator term as before; the linear terms in the numerator have canceled. (And I will say that this calculation is an open invitation to commit sign errors...)

The denominator is always positive for $ \ x \ > \ 2 \ $ , so we only need focus on the numerator. The first term is negative, as we already saw in our simplified version of the function; the last term is also negative for $ \ 1 \ < \ c \ < \ 2 \ $ . The other "assembled" terms are linear functions times exponential "growth" functions. For the third term, we find

$$ [c - 1 + \ln 2] \ + \ [ c - 1 ] \ [\ln 2] \ x \ > \ 0 \ \ \Rightarrow \ \ x \ > \ -\frac{c \ - \ 1 \ + \ln 2}{(c - 1) \ \ln 2} \ \ ; $$

so the third term in the numerator of the derivative is negative for the values of $ \ x \ $ and $ \ c \ $ under discussion.

In the second term, the factor $ \ [1 + x] \ [\ln c] \ - \ 1 \ $ complicates matters a bit: it is positive for $ \ x \ > \ \frac{1}{\ln c} \ - \ 1 \ = \ X $ , so the second term in the numerator of the derivative is positive for $ \ 0 \ < \ x \ < X \ $ . This is not an issue for $ \ e^{1/3} \ \approx \ 1.396 \ < \ c \ < \ 2 \ $ (for which $ \ X \ < \ 2 \ $ ), but otherwise we must examine the behavior of the term for smaller values of $ \ c \ $ . What we find is that the second term is always less than $ \ +1 \ $ for $ \ 0 \ < \ x \ < X \ $ , so it is always less positive than the third term in the numerator is negative for $ \ x \ > \ 2 \ $ .

We can conclude that the entire numerator is negative for $ \ x \ > \ 2 \ $ and $ \ 1 \ < \ c \ < \ 2 \ $ . It proves to be important to include all of the terms in order to see the behavior accurately (answering a diffculty raised earlier in the development of this post), but it also requires some graphical assistance to aid in understanding how certain of the terms in the derivative sum together.

That issue seems to be connected with an interesting feature of these curves. If we consider the family of functions $$ \ f(c) \ = \frac{c^x-(c\ - 1) x-1}{2^x-x-1}$$

for $ \ 1 \ \le \ c \ \le \ 2 \ $ on $ \ x \ > \ 2 \ $ , we see that $ \ f(1) \ $ is identically the zero function and that $ \ f ( 2 ) \ $ is identically $ \ y \ = 1 \ $ . For $ \ c \ < \ e^{1/2} \ $ , the curves are concave upward only; they simply have a "decaying" behavior as seen in Jinliang Xu's graphs. Above this critical value for $ \ c \ $ , an inflection point moves into the region and an increasingly "long" portion of the curve is concave downward as the curves "flatten out" toward $ \ y \ = \ 1 $ for small values of $ \ x \ $ , while remaining monotonically decreasing. These curves then require more careful analysis (which I missed early on in exploring this family).

colormegone
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  • When putting in the linear terms and having the derivative, you said that every term in the numerator is negative. However, I find that the term $1-x\ln c$ does not hold that, tell me am I mistaken ? – FlyFish May 13 '16 at 05:06
  • I wasn't watching that quite closely enough: it is negative for $ \ x \ \ge \ 2 \ $ for $ \ c \ > \ e^{1/2} \ \approx \ 1.649 \ $ . I'll need to check inequalities a bit more to show that it doesn't keep up with the third term. – colormegone May 13 '16 at 05:19
  • In the first step, I remove the constant terms in the function, and get $f(x) = \frac{c^x-c\cdot x+x}{2^x-x}$. And in the second step, I remove the constant terms and the linear terms and get $f(x) = \frac{c^x}{2^x}$. At each step, I plot the two new functions of $x$ with different $c$, and I found the curves are all decreasing.

    So perhaps your way is right.

    – FlyFish May 13 '16 at 05:27
  • There is a bit of a complication in the behavior of these curves for larger values of $ \ c \ $ which just begins to be hinted at in the graph you show. Perhaps I am now better able to answer your reasonable objection in my revision. – colormegone May 13 '16 at 20:02
  • Thank you in advance. I am completely amazed at the wonder and the greatness of your proof. – FlyFish May 14 '16 at 12:13
  • Thank you for your kind words. I wouldn't say it was a "wonderful" proof: I just found that one has to be rather careful in working with this family of functions to understand how the derivatives behave (and I didn't really go thoroughly into all the details, for lack of time). Plainly, a lot is being passed over when the author(s) of the paper simply declares that the functions are monotonically decreasing. I think a similar argument to the one here can be used for the other set of functions you're asking about. – colormegone May 14 '16 at 18:31
  • Can you help me to look at another proof question about function's monotonity ? It is similar to this one. However, I cannot prove it in your way here. Thank you in advance. The link: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1783174/helpto-prove-increasing-function-formula-and-curves-plot – FlyFish May 15 '16 at 10:48