Necessary and sufficient conditions for discrete inequalities of Jensen–Steffensen type with applications

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the discrete Jensen inequality to be satisfied for real (not necessarily nonnegative) weights. The result generalizes and completes the classical Jensen–Steffensen inequality. The validity of the strict inequality is studied. As applications, we first give the form of our result for strongly convex functions, then we study discrete quasi-arithmetic means with real (not necessarily nonnegative) weights, and finally we refine the inequality obtained.

Keywords

• Convex and strongly convex functions
• Discrete Jensen–Steffensen inequality
• Quasi-arithmetic means
• Refinement