"Torture" integral solved Message #11 Posted by Valentin Albillo on 15 Dec 2005, 9:16 a.m., in response to message #10 by Marcus von Cube, Germany
Hi, Marcus:
Marcus posted:
"A simple aproach is to replace the lower boundary by something above zero [...] Smaller boundaries make things worse!"
Yes, they do. That the result you get with your lower boundary somewhat resembles the correct value is just a coincidence.
"Variable substitution doesn't seem to get rid of the oscillations and I get an infinite boundary instead."
True, but this is one possible way to deal with this integral.
The change:
t = -log(x)
results in:
Integral = Integral(0, Inf, cos(t.et))
= Integral(0, Inf, cos(W-1(t)))
where W(x) is Lambert's W function. You can then find the integral by subdividing the (0,Inf) original interval in subintervals and thus integrating between the zeros of cos(W-1(t)), thus getting an slowly convergent alternating series that can be accelerated by a number of methods (see my HP-11C Datafile article, for example). This results in an accurate value for the integral but, as you correctly guessed, there's a faster, simpler way:
"There are ways to tackle such problems by integrating in the complex plane"
That's right. You just need to remember that
eix = cos(x) + i*sin(x)
and the original integral becomes:
Integral = Integral(0, 1, RealPart(e(i*log(x)/x)/x))
= Integral(0, 1, RealPart(xi/x-1))
which can readily be integrated by considering it a line integral in the complex plane along some integration path. A simple parabolic path will do:
z = t + t*(1-t)*i
which takes us far from the oscillations of the real line. Using this path, your faithful HP-71B can compute the integral to full 12-digit precision in a few minutes, as follows:
10 DESTROY ALL @ COMPLEX Z @ SFLAG -1 @ DISP INTEGRAL(0,1,1E-9,FNY(IVAR))
20 DEF FNY(T) @ Z=(T,T-T*T) @ FNY=REPT(Z^((0,1)/Z-1)*(1,1-2*T))
>RUN
.323367431678
which, as stated, is the correct result rounded to the 12 decimal digits shown. The HP-15C solution is a mere verbatim translation of this 2-line 'program'.
This technique of computing difficult real-line integrals by taking them to the complex plane is actually very useful in many situations, and is discussed at length, with an example, in the marvelous HP-15C Advanced Functions Handbook.
Thanks for your interest and best regards from V.
Edited: 15 Dec 2005, 9:19 a.m.
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