On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:21 PM, Ken Hegeland <hege...@yahoo.com> wrote:
... [Skipping the questions about the exercise, as I haven't done it and have nothing to add.] > While I was struggling with this I decided to take a moment and read a bit > ahead and see what the next exercise is, and again, I'm having some trouble. > My real point of trouble is that I don't exactly understand what function > integration is. I tried googling it, and it seems to be calculus type math, > which I have never experienced. Is it safe to say function integration is > just finding the area under some function? Yes (in this context) > So, the goal of this is to split it into many small rectangles, and add up > the numbers? Yes. This method is known as Riemann sums or the Riemann integral. > I feel like that can't be it, because with dividing it by midpoints, you can > eventually make all rectangles L=(f x) W=1, which would make the areas equal > to (f x), so it would seem to be easier to just add every number. > (+ (f 0) (f 1) (f 2) (f 3) (f 4)....(f(- n 1))) Think what would happen if f changes very quickly. Then the rectangles computed at 0, 1, 2, ... don't become an accurate approximation. HTH, N. _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
