Find all functions $f:\mathbb R \to \mathbb R$ that satisfy $f(x) + 3 f\left( \frac {x-1}{x} \right) = 7x$.
How would we solve this? I noticed that if you plug in $\frac{x-1}{x}$ in for $x$, and then again, we can solve $f(x)$ after bashing it out with systems of equations. However, the resulting function has a few values for which it is undefined. I tried finding those values by going back to the original equation, but it doesn't seem like a "good" answer. Since I then wanted to verify that I had the correct function first, I plugged the actual function back into the original equation. However, the LHS and RHS didn't match up. Is there a better way to solve this other than just bashing?
Thanks in advance!
I think this is essentially the solution you came up with, but it's helpful to write out all the details.
Let $y=\frac{x-1}{x}$, $z=\frac{1}{1-x}$. Then, if $g(x)=\frac{x-1}{x}$, we have $y=g(x)$, $z=g(y)$, and $x=g(z)$. So the functional equation implies that \begin{align} f(x) + 3f(y)&=7x\\ f(y) + 3f(z)&=7y\\ f(z) + 3f(x)&=7z \end{align}
Then $f(y)=7y-3f(z)$ and $f(z)=7z-3f(x)$, so $f(y)=7y-3(7z-3f(x))=7y-21z+9f(x)$.
So $f(x)+21y-63z+27f(x)=7x$, meaning that \begin{align} f(x)&=\frac{7x-21y+63z}{28} \\ &=\frac{x-3y+9z}{4}\\ &=\frac{1}{4}\left(x-3+\frac{3}{x}+\frac{9}{1-x}\right) \end{align}
It's not too hard to check that this satisfies the original functional equation for all $x \neq 0,1$. (Actually, it's easier if you leave everything in terms of $x$, $y$, and $z$.)
What about the value of $f$ at $0$ and $1$? By setting $x=1$ in the original equation, we can see that:
$$ f(1)+3f(0)=7 \tag{1} $$
Because $\frac{x-1}{x}$ is never equal to $1$ and undefined at $x=0$, this is the only meaningful data the equation gives us about $f(0)$ and $f(1)$, so you can pick any values for them you wanted that satisfy $(1)$. There doesn't seem to be any choice that's much nicer than the others, since $f$ has simple poles at both $0$ and $1$ (e.g., we can never make $f$ continuous).