An integral is a way to “sum” the values of a function. There is sometimes confusion among students of calculus between the integral and the antiderivative. The integral is (informally) the area under the curve, nothing else. That we can compute an antiderivative using the integral is a nontrivial result we must prove. We will define the Riemann integral 1
Subsection5.1.1Partitions and lower and upper integrals
We want to integrate a bounded function defined on an interval We first define two auxiliary integrals that are defined for all bounded functions. Only then can we talk about the Riemann integral and the functions which it can integrate, the Riemann integrable functions.
The geometric idea of Darboux sums is indicated in Figure 5.1. The lower sum is the area of the shaded rectangles, and the upper sum is the area of the entire rectangles, shaded plus unshaded parts. The width of the th rectangle is the height of the shaded rectangle is and the height of the entire rectangle is
If integration is to make sense, then the lower and upper Darboux integrals should be the same number, as we want a single number to call the integral. However, these two integrals may differ for some functions.
The same definition of and is used when is defined on a larger set such that . In that case, we use the restriction of to and we must ensure that the restriction is bounded on .
That is, is a refinement of a partition if it contains all the numbers in and perhaps some other numbers in between. For example, is a partition of and is a refinement. The main reason for introducing refinements is the following proposition.
Armed with refinements, we prove the following. The key point of this next proposition is that the lower Darboux integral is less than or equal to the upper Darboux integral.
The middle inequality in (5.2) is the main point of the proposition. Let be partitions of . Define . The set is a partition of , which is a refinement of and a refinement of . By Proposition 5.1.7, and . So
In other words, for two arbitrary partitions and , we have . Recall Proposition 1.2.7, and take the supremum and infimum over all partitions:
We can finally define the Riemann integral. However, the Riemann integral is only defined on a certain class of functions, called the Riemann integrable functions.
By definition, a Riemann integrable function is bounded. Appealing to Proposition 5.1.8, we immediately obtain the following proposition. See also Figure 5.3.
We integrate constant functions using Proposition 5.1.8. If for some constant , then we take . In inequality (5.2) all the inequalities must be equalities. Thus is integrable on and .
Figure5.4.Darboux sums for the step function. is the area of the shaded rectangle, is the area of both rectangles, and is the area of the unshaded rectangle.
It may be worthwhile to extract part of the technique of the example into a proposition. Note that is exactly the total area of the white part of the rectangles in Figure 5.1.
Let be given. Take and let form the partition of . Then for all . As is decreasing, for every subinterval ,
Then
The sum telescopes, the terms successively cancel each other, something we have seen before. Picking to be such that , the proposition is satisfied, and the function is integrable.
A way of thinking of the integral is that it adds up (integrates) lots of local information—it sums over all . The integral sign was chosen by Leibniz to be the long S to mean summation. Unlike derivatives, which are “local,” integrals show up in applications when one wants a “global” answer: total distance travelled, average temperature, total charge, etc.
When is defined on a larger set and , we say is Riemann integrable on if the restriction of to is Riemann integrable. In this case, we say , and we write to mean the Riemann integral of the restriction of to .
At times, the variable may already have some other meaning. When we need to write down the variable of integration, we may simply use a different letter. For example,
(Challenging) Generalize the previous exercise. Show that if and only if there exists an , such that for every there exists a such that if is a partition with for all , then and . If , then .
Using Exercise 5.1.12 and the idea of the proof in Exercise 5.1.7, show that Darboux integral is the same as the standard definition of Riemann integral, which you have most likely seen in calculus. That is, show that if and only if there exists an , such that for every there exists a such that if is a partition with for all , then for every set with . If , then .