You need to flip the problem around a bit. You are trying to find the point x (which is (l_1,l_2)) that makes the minimum of the 3 LHS functions the largest. So, you can rewrite your problem as, in pseudocode,
maximise, by varying x in [0,1] X [0,1]
min([log(a1)+log(x(1)/(x(1)+1)) ...
log(a2)+log(x(2)/(x(2)+1))+log(1-x(1)) ...
log(a3)+log(1-x(1))+log(1-x(2))])
Since Matlab has fmincon, rewrite this as a minimisation problem,
minimise, by varying x in [0,1] X [0,1]
max(-[log(a1)+log(x(1)/(x(1)+1)) ...
log(a2)+log(x(2)/(x(2)+1))+log(1-x(1)) ...
log(a3)+log(1-x(1))+log(1-x(2))])
So the actual code is
F=@(x) max(-[log(a1)+log(x(1)/(x(1)+1)) ...
log(a2)+log(x(2)/(x(2)+1))+log(1-x(1)) ...
log(a3)+log(1-x(1))+log(1-x(2))])
[L,fval]=fmincon(F,[0.5 0.5])
which returns
L =
0.3383 0.6180
fval =
1.2800
obtfun' since it is not function ofx'? Thats the place I am struggling.