A tight Hermite-Hadamard's inequality and a generic method for comparison between residuals of inequalities with convex functions

Milan Merkle, Zoran D. Mitrović

Published 2020-04-16Version 1

We present a tight parametrical Hermite-Hadamard type inequality with probability measure, which yields a considerably closer upper bound for the mean value of convex function than the classical one. Our inequality becomes equality not only with affine functions, but also with a family of V-shaped curves determined by the parameter. The residual (error) of this inequality is strictly smaller than in the classical Hermite-Hadamard inequality under any probability measure and with all non-affine convex functions. In the framework of Karamata's theorem on the inequalities with convex functions, we propose a method of measuring a global performance of inequalities in terms of average residuals over functions of the type $x\mapsto |x-u|$. Using average residuals enables comparing two or more inequalities as themselves, with same or different measures and without referring to a particular function. Our method is applicable to all Karamata's type inequalities, with integrals or sums. A numerical experiment with three different measures indicates that the average residual in our inequality is about 4 times smaller than in classical right Hermite-Hadamard, and also is smaller than in Jensen's inequality, with all three measures.