Friday, 29 September 2017

Novel Integration Technique

How does one integrate the integral shown below? Well, the standard approaches don't work here and so a little trickery is called for. Here's the integral in question:  0sinxxdx
Firstly, let's define a function I(b) as follows:I(b)=0sinxxebxdxwhere b>=0
Now let's differentiate both sides with respect to b, not x:I(b)=0sinxebxdx
Using integration by parts, I(b) can be expressed as follows: I(b)=ebx(cosx+bsinx)b2+1|x=x=0=1b2+1
The demonstration of this integration by parts can be found here. Now integrating both sides with respect to b, we get:I(b)=1b2+1db=arctanb+C
Comparing this result for I(b) with our earlier result, we can write:arctanb+C=0sinxxebxdx
Now as b, the equation reduces to: π2+C=0 and so C=π2
Finally, we can write:I(b)=arctan(b)+π2=0sinxxebxdx
Now setting b=0, we achieve our desired result, namely:I(0)=0sinxxdx=π2
A video demonstration of this technique (known as Feynman's Technique, presumably after the famous physicist) can be found here:

No comments:

Post a Comment