Paper 2, Section II, A
Part IA, 2010
(a) State how the nature of a critical (or stationary) point of a function with can be determined by consideration of the eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix of , assuming is non-singular.
(b) Let . Find all the critical points of the function and determine their nature. Determine the zero contour of and sketch a contour plot showing the behaviour of the contours in the neighbourhood of the critical points.
(c) Now let . Show that is a critical point of for which the Hessian matrix of is singular. Find an approximation for to lowest non-trivial order in the neighbourhood of the point . Does have a maximum or a minimum at ? Justify your answer.