
330 • Definite Integrals
ing bit of area below the x-axis, just as in the above picture. This fact can
actually save you a lot of time, since it means that you don’t have to do any
calculations if your integral happens to fit the above template. We’ll give a
more formal proof of the above fact at the end of Section 18.1.1 of Chapter 18.
16.2 Definition of the Definite Integral
We have a nice working definition of the definite integral in terms of area,
but that doesn’t really help us to calculate specific integrals. Sure, we got by
in the last few examples, but only because we already know how to find the
area of any triangle or rectangle. We also got lucky with that last example
involving sin(x), because everything canceled out. In general, we won’t be so
lucky.
Actually, we’ve been in this situation before in the case of derivatives. We
could have defined f
0
(x) to be the slope of the tangent to y = f(x) at the
point (x, f(x)), but that wouldn’t have told us how to find the slope. Instead,
we defined f
0
(x) by the formula
f
0
(x) = lim
h→0
f(x + h) − f(x)
h
,
provided that the limit exists. As we’ve observed, this limit is of the indeter-
minate form 0/0, but we can still work it out in many cases. Anyway, once
we’ve made the above definition, the interpretation is that f
0
(x) represents
the slope of the tangent we’re interested in.
Unfortunately, the definition of the definite integral is a lot nastier than the
above definition of the derivative. The good news is that we’ve already done
the grunt work in the previous chapter, and we can just state the definition:
Z
b
a
f(x) dx = lim
mesh→0
n
X
j=1
f(c
j
)(x
j
− x
j−1
),
where a = x
0
< x
1
< ··· < x
n−1
< x
n
= b and
c
j
is in [x
j−1
, x
j
] for each j = 1, . . . , n.
Even though that definition is wordy, it still doesn’t tell the full story! You
also need to be aware of the following points:
• The expression a = x
0
< x
1
< ··· < x
n−1
< x
n
= b means that the
points x
0
, x
1
, x
2
, . . . , x
n−1
, and x
n
form a partition of the interval [a, b],
with x
0
= a on the left and x
n
= b on the right. The partition creates
n smaller intervals [x
0
, x
1
], [x
1
, x
2
], and so on up to [x
n−1
, x
n
].
• The mesh of the partition is the maximum length of these smaller inter-
vals; so we have
mesh = maximum of (x
1
−x
0
), (x
2
−x
1
), . . . , (x
n−1
−x
n−2
), (x
n
−x
n−1
).
• The numbers c
j
can be chosen anywhere in their corresponding smaller
intervals, one for each smaller interval. This is what is meant by saying
that c
j
is in [x
j−1
, x
j
].