Paper Title:

Some New Generalizations of Jensen's Inequality with Related Results and Applications

Author(s):

Steven G. From

Department of Mathematics
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Omaha, Nebraska 68182-0243.

E-mail: sfrom@unomaha.edu

Abstract:

In this paper, some new generalizations of Jensen's inequality are presented. In particular, upper and lower bounds for the Jensen gap are given and compared analytically and numerically to previously published bounds for both the discrete and continuous Jensen's inequality cases. The new bounds compare favorably to previously proposed bounds. A new method based on a series of locally linear interpolations is given and is the basis for most of the bounds given in this paper. The wide applicability of this method will be demonstrated. As by-products of this method, we shall obtain some new Hermite-Hadamard inequalities for functions which are 3-convex or 3-concave. The new method works to obtain bounds for the Jensen gap for non-convex functions as well, provided one or two derivatives of the nonlinear function are continuous. The mean residual life function of applied probability and reliability theory plays a prominent role in construction of bounds for the Jensen gap. We also present an exact integral representation for the Jensen gap in the continuous case. We briefly discuss some inequalities for other types of convexity, such as convexity in the geometric mean, and briefly discuss applications to reliability theory.

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