Let $a,b,c$ reals with sum 0. Prove that $\left|\sin{a}+\sin{b}+\sin{c}\right| \leq \frac{3\sqrt{3}}{2}.$
My idea was to set $z_1=\cos{a}+i\sin{a}$ and also $z_2,z_3$. Then I tried replacing the sines in the inequality with these complex numbers. However, I didn’t get to anything interesting that could help me prove this.
Thanks in advance!
Let $a=x-y$, $b=y-z$, $c=z-x$, then $a+b+c=0$ and there is no loss in generality. This gives, using trigonometric identities $$ F = \left|\sin{a}+\sin{b}+\sin{c}\right| \\ = \left|\sin{(x-y)}+\sin{(y-z)}+\sin{(z-x)}\right|\\ = 4 \left|\sin(x/2 - y/2) \sin(x/2 - z/2) \sin(y/2 - z/2)\right| $$ Now the last line shows that, whatever the choice $(x,y,z)$ is which maximizes this, we can add a constant to all three values in this choice $(x,y,z)$ without changing anything. So let's put $x=0$, $y = m+d$, $z = m-d$ [m for mean, d for difference] which gives, using again trigonometric identities, $$ F = 4 \left|\sin((m+d)/2) \sin((m-d)/2) \sin(d)\right| \\ = 2 \left|\sin(d) \right| \left| \cos(d) - \cos(m)\right| $$ Now for $\cos(d) > 0$, $m$ can be adjusted to $-\pi$ (for $\cos(d) < 0$, adjust $m=0$ which gives the same result) such that F is maximized to be (writing for both cases of $\cos(d) >< 0$) $$ F \le 2 \left|\sin(d) \right| (\left| \cos(d) \right| +1) $$ Put $\left| \cos(d) \right|= q$ then $$ F \le 2 \sqrt{1-q^2} (q +1) $$ which has a maximum at $F \le \frac{3\sqrt{3}}{2}$, as required. The maximum occurs at $q^* = |\cos(d^*)| = 0.5 $. For $\cos(d^*) = 0.5$, this is $d^* = 2 \pi n + \pi/3$, and for $\cos(d^*) = -0.5$, this is $d^* = 2 \pi n + 2 \pi/3$, both giving the same maximum value for $F$.