When the Cauchy inequality becomes a formula

Abstract

In this note we revisit the classical geometric-arithmetic mean inequality and find a formula for the difference of the arithmetic and the geometric means of given $n\in\mathbb N$ nonnegative numbers $x_1,x_2,\dots,x_n$. The formula yields new stronger versions of the geometric-arithmetic mean inequality. We also find a second version of a strong geometric-arithmetic mean inequality and show that all inequalities are optimal in some sense. Anther striking novelty is, that the equality in all new inequalities holds not only in the case when all $n$ numbers are equal, but also in other cases.