How to find the minimum value of this function?
This is again a question of the symmetric type, such as listed in:
- Why does Group Theory not come in here?
- How prove this inequality $(a^2+bc^4)(b^2+ca^4)(c^2+ab^4) \leq 64$
The above preliminaries are completed with:
- Do symmetric problems have symmetric solutions?
Theorem (The Purkiss Principle). Let $f$ and $g$ be symmetric functions with continuous second derivatives in the neighborhood of a point $P = (r, \cdots, r)$. On the set where $g$ equals $g(P)$, the function $f$ will have a local maximum or minimum at $P$ except in degenerate cases.
- Picture on the left: geometry of the conditions $\;x,y,z > 0\;$ and $\;x+y+z=1$ .
- Picture on the right: contour lines of $f(x,y,z)$ , as seen in the plane of the $\color{red}{red}$ triangle, are at $20$ equidistant levels, between the minimum and the maximum as found within the viewport
The $\color{blue}{blue\, spot}$ in the picture on the right is a proof without words that the only minimum inside the triangle is (indeed $= 1/2$ ) and at its center $(x,y,z) = (1/3,1/3,1/3)$ . This finishing touch is thus an informal proof (: disclaimer).
Update : a few further details.
- Function values close to viewport minimum are white
- Function values close to viewport maximum are black
- Contour grey values are just the other way around
- Function values at the corners of the triangle $=1$ (black)
- Function values at the edge centers of the triangle $=4/7$
To find a minimum of the function I'm going to find a lower bound and show that the lower bound is attained. For that I'm going to use nothing harder than Cauchy-Schwarz inequality.
Let $f(x, y, z)$ denote your function. Using mentioned Cauchy-Schwarz inequality we get: $$f(x, y, z)\cdot\big(x(3y^2+3z^2+3yz+1) + y(3x^2+3z^2+3xz+1) + z(3x^2+3y^2+3xy+1)\big) \\ \geqslant (x+y+z)^2 = 1.$$
So, $$f(x, y, z) \geqslant \frac{1}{3(xy^2 + xz^2 + yx^2 + yz^2 + zx^2 + zy^2 + 3xyz) + x+y+z} \\ =\frac{1}{3(x+y+z)(xy+yz+xz) + 1} = \frac{1}{3(xy+yz+xz) + 1}$$
We want to get an upper bound of $xy + yz + xz$ under the condition $x + y + z = 1$. We can do this, for example: $$\begin{align} xy + yz + xz &\leqslant x^2 + y^2 + z^2 \\ 3(xy + yz + xz) &\leqslant (x + y + z)^2 = 1 \\ xy + yz + xz &\leqslant \frac{1}{3} \end{align}$$
Finally,
$f(x, y, z) \geqslant \dfrac{1}{3\cdot\frac{1}{3} + 1} = \dfrac{1}{2}.$ So $\dfrac{1}{2}$ is the lower bound.
Since $\displaystyle f\left(\frac{1}{3}, \frac{1}{3}, \frac{1}{3}\right) = \frac{1}{6} + \frac{1}{6} + \frac{1}{6} = \frac{1}{2}$, we can see that we've found a point where the lower bound is attained so this is the minimum of the function.