Constrained nonlinear optimization

Question

I am wondering what is the easiest/best way to find the values of $x_i$ that maximize the expression $\sum_{i=1}^N a_i \ln (x_i)$ under the constraints $\sum_{i=1}^Nx_i = 1$ and $ 0\leq x_i \leq 1$

Do I have to use Lagrange multipliers? Is there an easier way?

By using the Lagrange multiplier and setting the derivative of the Lagrangian $\sum_i a_i\ln x_i + \lambda(1-\sum_i x_i)$ to 0 I arrive at the following conclusion:

\begin{align} x_i=\frac{a_i}{\lambda} \forall i \in \{1, \ldots, N \} \end{align}

How would I proceed from that?

Update: solution

By enforcing $\sum_i x_i = 1$ it follows that $\sum_i \frac{a_i}{\lambda} = 1$ which leads to $\lambda = \sum_i a_i$ and $x_i = \frac{a_i}{\sum_j a_j}$

Answer 1

Solution

By enforcing $\sum_i x_i = 1$ it follows that $\sum_i \frac{a_i}{\lambda} = 1$ which leads to $\lambda = \sum_i a_i$ and $x_i = \frac{a_i}{\sum_j a_j}$