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In mathematics, a Riemann sum is a certain kind of approximation of an integral by a finite sum. It is named after nineteenth century German mathematician Bernhard Riemann . One very common application is in numerical integration , i.e., approximating the area of functions or lines on a graph, where it is also known as the rectangle rule .
One popular restriction is the use of "left-hand" and "right-hand" Riemann sums. In a left-hand Riemann sum, t i = x i for all i, and in a right-hand Riemann sum, t i = x i + 1 for all i. Alone this restriction does not impose a problem: we can refine any partition in a way that makes it a left-hand or right-hand sum by subdividing it at each t i.
The trapezoidal rule may be viewed as the result obtained by averaging the left and right Riemann sums, and is sometimes defined this way. The integral can be even better approximated by partitioning the integration interval , applying the trapezoidal rule to each subinterval, and summing the results.
The harmonic number H n can be interpreted as a Riemann sum of the integral: + = (+). The n th harmonic number is about as large as the natural logarithm of n . The reason is that the sum is approximated by the integral ∫ 1 n 1 x d x , {\displaystyle \int _{1}^{n}{\frac {1}{x}}\,dx,} whose value is ln n .
A quadrature rule is an approximation of the definite integral of a function, usually stated as a weighted sum of function values at specified points within the domain of integration. Numerical integration methods can generally be described as combining evaluations of the integrand to get an approximation to the integral.
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (/ ˈ r iː m ɑː n /; [1] German: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈbɛʁnhaʁt ˈʁiːman] ⓘ; [2] [3] 17 September 1826 – 20 July 1866) was a German mathematician who made profound contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry.
The shell method goes as follows: Consider a volume in three dimensions obtained by rotating a cross-section in the xy-plane around the y-axis.Suppose the cross-section is defined by the graph of the positive function f(x) on the interval [a, b].
A partition of an interval being used in a Riemann sum. The partition itself is shown in grey at the bottom, with the norm of the partition indicated in red. In mathematics, a partition of an interval [a, b] on the real line is a finite sequence x 0, x 1, x 2, …, x n of real numbers such that a = x 0 < x 1 < x 2 < … < x n = b.