Volume 10 (2009), Issue 4, Article 106, 5 pp.

A GEOMETRIC INEQUALITY OF THE GENERALIZED ERDÖS-MORDELL

TYPE
YU-DONG WU, CHUN-LEI YU, AND ZHI-HUA ZHANG
D EPARTMENT OF M ATHEMATICS
Z HEJIANG X INCHANG H IGH S CHOOL
S HAOXING 312500, Z HEJIANG
P EOPLE ’ S R EPUBLIC OF C HINA
yudong.wu@yahoo.com.cn

seetill@126.com
D EPARTMENT OF M ATHEMATICS
S HILI S ENIOR H IGH S CHOOL IN Z IXING
C HENZHOU 423400, H UNAN
P EOPLE ’ S R EPUBLIC OF C HINA
zxzh1234@163.com

Received 20 April, 2009; accepted 09 October, 2009

Communicated by S.S. Dragomir
Dedicated to Mr. Ting-Feng Dong on the occasion of his 55th birthday.

A BSTRACT. In this short note, we solve an interesting geometric inequality problem relating to
two points in triangle posed by Liu [7], and also give two corollaries.

Key words and phrases: Geometric inequality, triangle, Erdös-Mordell inequality, Hayashi’s inequality, Klamkin’s inequality.

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 51M16.

1. I NTRODUCTION AND M AIN R ESULTS

Let P , Q be two arbitrary interior points in 4ABC, and let a, b, c be the lengths of its sides,
S the area, R the circumradius and r the inradius, respectively. Denote by R1 , R2 , R3 and r1 ,
r2 , r3 the distances from P to the vertices A, B, C and the sides BC, CA, AB, respectively.
For the interior point Q, define D1 , D2 , D3 and d1 , d2 , d3 similarly (see Figure 1.1).
The following well-known and elegant result (see [1, Theorem 12.13, pp.105])
(1.1) R1 + R2 + R3 ≥ 2(r1 + r2 + r3 )
The authors would like to thank the anonymous referee for his very careful reading and some valuable suggestions.
107-09
2 Y.-D. W U , C.-L. Y U , AND Z.-H. Z HANG

G
D1
d2
H d3
R1 M

N Q r2

r3 P D3
D2 d1
R2 r1 R3
B F L C

Figure 1.1:

concerning Ri and ri (i = 1, 2, 3) is called the Erdös-Mordell inequality. Inequality (1.1) was

generalized as follows [9, Theorem 15, pp. 318]:
(1.2) R1 x2 + R2 y 2 + R3 z 2 ≥ 2(r1 yz + r2 zx + r3 xy)
for all x, y, z ≥ 0.
And the special case n = 2 of [9, Theorem 8, pp. 315-316] states that
p p p p p p 
(1.3) R1 D1 + R2 D2 + R3 D3 ≥ 2 r1 d1 + r2 d2 + r3 d3 ,
which also extends (1.1).
Recently, for all x, y, z ≥ 0, J. Liu [8, Proposition 2] obtained
p p p p p p 
(1.4) R1 D1 x2 + R2 D2 y 2 + R3 D3 z 2 ≥ 2 r1 d1 yz + r2 d2 zx + r3 d3 xy
which generalizes inequality (1.3).
In 2008, J. Liu [7] posed the following interesting geometric inequality problem.

Problem 1.1. For a triangle ABC and two arbitrary interior points P , Q, prove or disprove that

(1.5) R1 D1 + R2 D2 + R3 D3 ≥ 4(r2 r3 + r3 r1 + r1 r2 ).

We will solve Problem 1.1 in this paper.

From inequality (1.5), we get
R1 D1 + R2 D2 + R3 D3 ≥ 4(d2 d3 + d3 d1 + d1 d2 ).
Hence, we obtain the following result.

Corollary 1.1. For any 4ABC and two interior points P , Q, we have
p
(1.6) R1 D1 + R2 D2 + R3 D3 ≥ 4 (r2 r3 + r3 r1 + r1 r2 )(d2 d3 + d3 d1 + d1 d2 ).

J. Inequal. Pure and Appl. Math., 10(4) (2009), Art. 106, 5 pp. http://jipam.vu.edu.au/
 G ENERALIZED E RDÖS -M ORDELL T YPE G EOMETRIC I NEQUALITY 3

From inequality (1.5), and by making use of an inversion transformation [2, pp.48-49] (see
also [3, pp.108-109]) in the triangle, we easily get the following result.

Corollary 1.2. For any 4ABC and two interior points P , Q, we have
 
D1 D2 D3 1 1 1
(1.7) + + ≥ 4 · |P Q| · + + .
R 1 r1 R2 r2 R3 r3 R1 R2 R2 R3 R3 R1
Remark 1. With one of Liu’s theorems [8, Theorem 3], inequality (1.2) implies (1.4). However,
we cannot determine whether inequalities (1.1) and (1.3) imply inequality (1.5) or inequality
(1.6), or inequalities (1.5) and (1.3) imply inequality (1.1).

2. P RELIMINARY R ESULTS

Lemma 2.1. We have for any 4ABC and an arbitrary interior point P that
(2.1) aR1 ≥ br2 + cr3 ,

(2.2) bR2 ≥ cr3 + ar1 ,

(2.3) cR3 ≥ ar1 + br2 .

Proof. Inequalities (2.1) – (2.3) directly follow from the obvious fact
ar1 + br2 + cr3 = 2S,
the formulas of the altitude
2S 2S 2S
ha = , hb = , hc = ,
a b c
and the evident inequalities [11]
R1 + r1 ≥ ha ,
R2 + r2 ≥ hb ,
R3 + r3 ≥ hc .


Lemma 2.2 ([4, 5]). For real numbers x1 , x2 , x3 , y1 , y2 , y3 such that

x1 x2 + x2 x3 + x3 x1 ≥ 0
and
y1 y2 + y2 y3 + y3 y1 ≥ 0,
the inequality

(2.4) (y2 + y3 )x1 + (y3 + y1 )x2 + (y1 + y2 )x3

p
≥ 2 (x1 x2 + x2 x3 + x3 x1 )(y1 y2 + y2 y3 + y3 y1 )

J. Inequal. Pure and Appl. Math., 10(4) (2009), Art. 106, 5 pp. http://jipam.vu.edu.au/
4 Y.-D. W U , C.-L. Y U , AND Z.-H. Z HANG

x1 x2 x3
holds, with equality if and only if y1
= y2
= y3
.

Lemma 2.3 (Hayashi’s inequality, [9, pp.297, 311]). For any 4ABC and an arbitrary point
P , we have
R1 R2 R2 R3 R3 R1
(2.5) + + ≥ 1.
ab bc ca
Equality holds if and only if P is the orthocenter of the acute triangle ABC or one of the
vertexes of triangle ABC.

Lemma 2.4 (Klamkin’s inequality, [6, 10]). Let A, B, C be the angles of 4ABC. For positive
real numbers u, v, w, the inequality
r
1 u+v+w
(2.6) u sin A + v sin B + w sin C ≤ (uv + vw + wu)
2 uvw
holds, with equality if and only if u = v = w and 4ABC is equilateral.

Lemma 2.5. For any 4ABC and an arbitrary interior point P , we have
p
(2.7) abr1 r2 + bcr2 r3 + car3 r1 ≥ 2(r2 r3 + r3 r1 + r1 r2 ).

Proof. Suppose that the actual barycentric coordinates of P are (x, y, z), Then x = area of
4P BC, and therefore
x area(4P BC) r1 a 2r1 a 2Rr1
= = = · = .
x+y+z S bc sin A bc 2 sin A bc
Therefore
bc x
r1 = · ,
2R x+y+z
ca y
r2 = · ,
2R x+y+z
ab z
r3 = · .
2R x + y + z
Thus, inequality (2.7) is equivalent to
√
 
abc abc a b c
(2.8) xy + yz + zx ≥ yz + zx + xy
2R(x + y + z) R(x + y + z)2 2R 2R 2R
or
1 √
(2.9) (x + y + z) xy + yz + zx ≥ yz sin A + zx sin B + xy sin C.
2
Inequality (2.9) follows from Lemma 2.4 by taking
 
1 1 1
(u, v, w) = , , .
x y z
This completes the proof of Lemma 2.5. 

J. Inequal. Pure and Appl. Math., 10(4) (2009), Art. 106, 5 pp. http://jipam.vu.edu.au/
 G ENERALIZED E RDÖS -M ORDELL T YPE G EOMETRIC I NEQUALITY 5

3. S OLUTION OF P ROBLEM 1.1

Proof. In view of Lemmas 2.1 – 2.3 and 2.5, we have that

R1 D1 + R2 D2 + R3 D3
D1 D2 D3
= aR1 · + bR2 · + cR3 ·
a b c
D1 D2 D3
≥ (br2 + cr3 ) · + (cr3 + ar1 ) · + (ar1 + br2 ) ·
s a b c
 
D1 D2 D2 D3 D3 D1
≥ 2 (abr1 r2 + bcr2 r3 + car3 r1 ) + +
ab bc ca
p
≥ 2 abr1 r2 + bcr2 r3 + car3 r1
≥ 4(r2 r3 + r3 r1 + r1 r2 ).
The proof of inequality (1.5) is thus completed. 

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J. Inequal. Pure and Appl. Math., 10(4) (2009), Art. 106, 5 pp. http://jipam.vu.edu.au/