Paper 2, Section II, H

Optimization
Part IB, 2018

What does it mean to state that f:RnRf: \mathbb{R}^{n} \rightarrow \mathbb{R} is a convex function?

Suppose that f,g:RnRf, g: \mathbb{R}^{n} \rightarrow \mathbb{R} are convex functions, and for bRb \in \mathbb{R} let

ϕ(b)=inf{f(x):g(x)b}\phi(b)=\inf \{f(x): g(x) \leqslant b\}

Assuming ϕ(b)\phi(b) is finite for all bRb \in \mathbb{R}, prove that the function ϕ\phi is convex.