Many books have been written on the theory of functional equations, but very few help readers solve functional equations in mathematics competitions and mathematical problem solving. This book fills that gap. Each chapter includes a list of problems associated with the covered material. These vary in difficulty, with the easiest being accessible to any high school student who has read the chapter carefully. The most difficult will challenge students studying for the International Mathematical Olympiad or the Putnam Competition. An appendix provides a springboard for further investigation of the concepts of limits, infinite series and continuity.

Functional Equations, Inequalities and Applications provides an extensive study of several important equations and inequalities, useful in a number of problems in mathematical analysis. Subjects dealt with include the generalized Cauchy functional equation, the Ulam stability theory in the geometry of partial differential equations, stability of a quadratic functional equation in Banach modules, functional equations and mean value theorems, isometric mappings, functional inequalities of iterative type, related to a Cauchy functional equation, the median principle for inequalities and applications, Hadamard and Dragomir-Agarwal inequalities, the Euler formulae and convex functions and approximate algebra homomorphisms. Also included are applications to some problems of pure and applied mathematics. This book will be of particular interest to mathematicians and graduate students whose work involves functional equations, inequalities and applications.

The notion of stability of functional equations of several variables in the sense used here had its origins more than half a century ago when S. Ulam posed the fundamental problem and Donald H. Hyers gave the first significant partial solution in 1941. The subject has been revised and de veloped by an increasing number of mathematicians, particularly during the last two decades. Three survey articles have been written on the subject by D. H. Hyers (1983), D. H. Hyers and Th. M. Rassias (1992), and most recently by G. L. Forti (1995). None of these works included proofs of the results which were discussed. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that wider interest in this subject area has increased substantially over the last years, yet the pre sentation of research has been confined mainly to journal articles. The time seems ripe for a comprehensive introduction to this subject, which is the purpose of the present work. This book is the first to cover the classical results along with current research in the subject. An attempt has been made to present the material in an integrated and self-contained fashion. In addition to the main topic of the stability of certain functional equa tions, some other related problems are discussed, including the stability of the convex functional inequality and the stability of minimum points. A sad note. During the final stages of the manuscript our beloved co author and friend Professor Donald H. Hyers passed away.

Functions and their properties have been part of the rigorous precollege curriculum for decades. And functional equations have been a favorite topic of the leading national and international mathematical competitions. Yet the subject has not received equal attention by authors at an introductory level. The majority of the books on the topic remain unreachable to the curious and intelligent precollege student. The present book is an attempt to eliminate this disparity. The book opens with a review chapter on functions, which collects the relevant foundational information on functions, plus some material potentially new to the reader. The next chapter presents a working definition of functional equations and explains the difficulties in trying to systematize the theory. With each new chapter, the author presents methods for the solution of a particular group of equations. Each chapter is complemented with many solved examples, the majority of which are taken from mathematical competitions and professional journals. The book ends with a chapter of unsolved problems and some other auxiliary material. The book is an invaluable resource for precollege and college students who want to deepen their knowledge of functions and their properties, for teachers and instructors who wish to enrich their curricula, and for any lover of mathematical problem-solving techniques. In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession.

This lively, problem-oriented text, first published in 2004, is designed to coach readers toward mastery of the most fundamental mathematical inequalities. With the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality as the initial guide, the reader is led through a sequence of fascinating problems whose solutions are presented as they might have been discovered - either by one of history's famous mathematicians or by the reader. The problems emphasize beauty and surprise, but along the way readers will find systematic coverage of the geometry of squares, convexity, the ladder of power means, majorization, Schur convexity, exponential sums, and the inequalities of Hölder, Hilbert, and Hardy. The text is accessible to anyone who knows calculus and who cares about solving problems. It is well suited to self-study, directed study, or as a supplement to courses in analysis, probability, and combinatorics.

The theory of hypergroups is a rapidly developing area of mathematics due to its diverse applications in different areas like probability, harmonic analysis, etc. This book exhibits the use of functional equations and spectral synthesis in the theory of hypergroups. It also presents the fruitful consequences of this delicate "marriage" where the methods of spectral analysis and synthesis can provide an efficient tool in characterization problems of function classes on hypergroups. This book is written for the interested reader who has open eyes for both functional equations and hypergroups, and who dares to enter a new world of ideas, a new world of methods - and, sometimes, a new world of unexpected difficulties.

In this book we shall study linear functional equations of the form m bu(x) == Lak(X)U(Qk(X)) = f(x), (1) k=l where U is an unknown function from a given space F(X) of functions on a set X, Qk: X -+ X are given mappings, ak and f are given functions. Our approach is based on the investigation of the operators given by the left-hand side of equa tion (1). In what follows such operators will be called functional operators. We will pay special attention to the spectral properties of functional operators, first of all, to invertibility and the Noether property. Since the set X, the space F(X), the mappings Qk and the coefficients ak are arbitrary, the class of operators of the form (1) is very rich and some of its individ ual representatives are related with problems arising in various areas of mathemat ics and its applications. In addition to the classical theory of functional equations, among such areas one can indicate the theory of functional-differential equations with deviating argument, the theory of nonlocal problems for partial differential equations, the theory of boundary value problems for the equation of a vibrating string and equations of mixed type, a number of problems of the general theory of operator algebras and the theory of dynamical systems, the spectral theory of au tomorphisms of Banach algebras, and other problems.