triangle inequality

**sfspitfire23** · April 24th 2010, 09:57 AM

Could I use thhe triangle inequality to perform the following:

$\frac{|a-b|}{2}\leq \frac{|a|}{2} - \frac{|b|}{2}$ ?

I cant seem to find a proof of why you can do this is if you can...

**nimon** · April 24th 2010, 10:16 AM

I don't think so. The triangle inequality implies that

$|a| = |(a-b)+b| \leq |a-b|+|b|$

so that

$<br /> |a|-|b| \leq |a-b| \Rightarrow \frac{|a|}{2}-\frac{|b|}{2} \leq \frac{|a-b|}{2},<br />$

which is the opposite of what you wanted!

In fact you can show that

$|a|-|b| \leq |a-b|,|a+b| \leq |a|+|b|,$

which is quite a nice way to remember them all.

**sfspitfire23** · April 24th 2010, 10:58 AM

Ah, I must be able to do this then by the triangle inequality:

$\frac{|a-b|}{2}\leq \frac{|a|}{2} + \frac{|b|}{2}$

yes?

**nimon** · April 25th 2010, 02:41 AM

Yep! To see why:

$|a-b| = |a+ (-b)| \leq |a|+|-b| = |a|+|b|.$

For practice, try also to show that

$|a|-|b| \leq |a+b|,$

the four inequalities will come in handy for the rest of your life!

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