A simple math identity about one
Created on August 16, 2023
Written by Some author
Read time: 1 minutes
Summary: In this blog post, we will dive into how we can prove multiply b and c divided by product of a minus b and a minus c plus ... is equal to one.
Prove that
$$\frac{bc}{(a-b)(a-c)}+ \frac{ca}{(b-c)(b-a)}+\frac{ab}{(c-a)(c-b)}=1$$
given $a \not = b\not =c$ and $a \not= c$.
Proof:
Let $x = a-b$ and $y = b-c$ and $z = a-c$, then we will have the following:
$$\frac{bc}{(a-b) (a-c)} + \frac{ca}{(b-c)(b-a)} + \frac{ab}{(c-a)(c-b)} = \frac{bc}{xz} - \frac{ca}{xy} + \frac{ab}{yz} \\ = \frac{bc y - ca z + ab x}{xyz}$$
Since $x =a -b$ and $y = b-c$ so $x + y =a-c = z$.
and so our original formula will be
$$\frac{bcy -ca(x+y) +abx}{xyz} = \frac{c(b-a)y+a(b-c)x}{xyz} \\= \frac{(a-c)xy}{xyz} = 1$$,
which proves the identity