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Simpson's Rule

Main Concept

Integral

The integral of a function  between the points  and  is denoted by

 

 

and can be roughly described as the area below the graph of  and above the -axis, minus any area above the graph and below the -axis, and all taken between the points  and .

The integral is important because it is an antiderivative for the original function, that is, if

then

    .

 

Riemann sum

A Riemann sum is an approximation to the integral, that is, an approximation using rectangles to the area mentioned above. The line segment from  to  is split into  subsegments which form the bases of these rectangles, and the corresponding heights are determined by the value of  at some point  between the endpoints of the subsegment. The division of the segment  into subsegments is called a partition. For the sake of convenience we will assume here that the subsegments are of equal width, although this is not strictly necessary.

 

The Riemann Sum is then given by the general formula:

 

 

There are five main types of Riemann Sums, depending on which point  is chosen to determine the height:

 

• 

Right Sum: the right endpoint of the subsegment

• 

Left Sum: the left endpoint of the subsegment

• 

Middle Sum: the point half way between the left and right endpoints

• 

Lower Sum: any point  such that  is minimal

• 

Upper Sum: any point  such that  is maximal

Simpson's Rule

Instead of approximating the area under a curve using rectangles or trapezoids, parabolas can be used to approximate each part of a curve.

 

Let us compute the area under a parabola of the equation  passing through the three points :

As the points are on the parabola, we have:

Hence:

Therefore, the area under a parabola can be written as:

Hence by adding all the areas under each parabolic arc using three points we can derive:

 

The above equation can be simplified into Simpson's rule:

 

Adjust the size (n) of the partition used to approximate the area under the curve. Since two subsegments of the partition are used for each parabola, there will be  parabolas used.

 

domain =

range =

 

 

n =

Example =

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