# Are these two questions really duplicates?

First, I'd like to appologize if this similar questions were already made. I've tried to look for something similar and the nearest I found was this. I've even looked the two examples given in the mentioned question but didn't find them too similar to my own: In my case, I guess the question is different due to the intentions of both askers.

Recently, I've made this question which was voted to close as a duplicate of this other question. In my question, I gave every information in my trial to answer and it was quite correct, I missed only the condition $x>0$ which was pointed by some users. In the second question, the user had a very faint approach to solving it. I knew beforehand that I could use the search (this must be a classic problem in the beginning of the study of inequalities), but I was more interested to show my work and receive criticism for it than to find an answer to it.

I feel like my question is like "is my answer correct?" with a subtle sense of correctness (I've read in the earlier pages of Courant's book that $x^2 +1\geq 2x$ and this was due to a property of the quadratic function so I knew it depended on it) and his question is "how can I do it?" with no clue on how to do it.

So are they really duplicates? This is important to me because I do a lot of this kind of questions in which I'm interested in showing what I thought - which - at least for me, seems a totally different kind of intention and hence, of question.

• Are you asking whether solution verification questions should be closed as duplicates? This was discussed here and in several other threads. The consensus seems to be that they should be closed as duplicates after the OP received sufficient feedback on their solution, see this answer. – Martin Sleziak Aug 6 '16 at 4:19
• It is worth mentioning that a possibility of disallowing solution verification questions completely was discussed a few times, I give some links in my answer here, In case of your question, you ask about the inequality $x+\frac1x\ge2$, which is a very frequent question. This might have been a factor, too. – Martin Sleziak Aug 6 '16 at 4:25
• You should probably clarify in your post whether the linked questions are only an illustration of a more general issue you wish to discuss or whether you are interested in this particular closure. If it is the latter, you should add (specific-question) tag, see the tag info. – Martin Sleziak Aug 6 '16 at 4:34
• Don't you think studying the solutions on the existing questions would have allowed you to decide the correctness of your approach? – quid Aug 6 '16 at 9:41
• Per Martin Sleziak's first Comment, the key here (if "proof verification" was your goal) is that you received feedback about the omission of requirement $x\gt 0$, needed in the first step of your proof. A posted Answer points out how far one can go without this assumption, essentially deferring its use until the end when a comparison of signs for numerator and denominator has to be made. In short I think you got the desired feedback, and you should not look upon closing as a duplicate as a bad thing since it did not deprive you of learning opportunity or reputation. – hardmath Aug 6 '16 at 17:49