Series expansions of means (Q1069081)

The paper is concerned with properties of means. A mean M(u,v) is understood to be a homogeneous symmetric function of two positive real variables satisfying min(u,v)\(\leq M(u,v)\leq \max (u,v)\) for all u and v. Using the representation \(M(u,v)=u M(1,1-t)\), \(0\leq t=1-vu^{-1}\leq 1\) the authors construct power series expansions in t for the following means: \[ M_ p(u,v)=\frac{u^ p+v^ p}{u^{p-1}+v^{p-1}},\quad \mu_ p(u,v)=(\frac{u^ p+v^ p}{2})^{1/p}, \] \[ m_ p(u,v)=[\frac{v^{p+1}-u^{p+1}}{(v-u)(p+1)}]^{1/p},\quad E(r,s;u,v)=(\frac{u^ s-v^ s}{u^ r-v^ r}\frac{r}{s})^{1/(s-r)} \] and \(G(r,s;u,v)=((u^ s+v^ s)/(u^ r+v^ r))^{1/(s-r)}\). Explicit formulas and recurrence relations are given for the coefficients of the expansions. These are obtained using a generalized chain rule of differentiation and Euler's recurrence formula, respectively. By matching the coefficients of the respective expansions it is shown that the parametrizations E(r,s;u,v) and \(M_ p(u,v)\) have in common only the familiar arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means.