Quadratic-may be well known

This was posted in another iitian forum (by one of our members :D). Its a nice problem so I flicked it.

Let f(x) = ax2+bx+c be such that the equation f(x) = x has non-real roots.

Prove that this implies that the equation f(f(x)) = x too has non-real roots

3 Answers

341
Hari Shankar ·

no that logic isnt right to begin with

11
Devil ·

341
Hari Shankar ·

thats correct.

There's a simpler method though.

As you rightly observed, f(x) = x does not have real roots implies f(x)>x for all real x or f(x)<x for all real x.

We will just look at f(x)>x as the same reasoning holds for the other case too.

We have f(f(x))>f(x)>x for all real x and hence the equation f(f(x)) =x has no real roots

finis!

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