Using Lagrange multipliers to find the a point on a Paraboloid surface that is closet to the origin.

lagrange multipliermultivariable-calculus

How can you find the point which has the shortest distance to the origin? I have an paraboloid surface $z=1-x^2-y^2$ where $z \geq -1$. so the surface is bounded by the $z=1-x^2-y^2$ and $z \geq -1$
I need to use Lagrange multipliers to solve this.
I have set up the $z=1-x^2-y^2$ as my constraints, but I do not know what to do with the $z \geq-1$.

Best Answer

The variables are $x$, $y$ and $z$ .

The objective function is minimizing the distance to the origin $f(x,y,z)=x^2 +y^2+z^2$.

The constraints are $g(x,y,z)=-1-z \leq 0$ and $h(x,y,z)=x^2+y^2+z-1=0$.

If you use KKT conditions, it will be easy to solve the problem.