Paper 1, Section II, E
Let . We say that is a real root of if . Show that if is differentiable and has distinct real roots, then has at least real roots. [Rolle's theorem may be used, provided you state it clearly.]
Let be a polynomial in , where all and . (In other words, the are the nonzero coefficients of the polynomial, arranged in order of increasing power of .) The number of sign changes in the coefficients of is the number of for which . For example, the polynomial has 2 sign changes. Show by induction on that the number of positive real roots of is less than or equal to the number of sign changes in its coefficients.
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