Numerical Integration
Maths circle meeting on 10 May 2025
Room and time: virtual/online with the video conferencing software Zoom (Paderborn University campus licence) from 10:00 to 13:00
Leader of the workshop: Dr. Kerstin Hesse
Description: How do you calculate the area between the graph of a function and the x-axis on the interval [a,b]? In doing so, parts of the area above the x-axis should have a positive sign and parts of the area below the x-axis should have a negative sign. - In upper secondary school, you learn that this can be done with the help of the integral (and more specifically with an antiderivative of the integrand), but this does not work for the function f(x) = exp(x2), and you need so-called "numerical integration methods". - In this Maths Circle meeting, we will deal with numerical integration methods with which the area between the graph and the x-axis can be approximated, but (apart from the accuracy limited by computer arithmetic) can be calculated with arbitrary precision. We study and apply the compound trapezoidal rule and the compound Simpson's rule. We perform the numerical calculations using Excel (or a comparable spreadsheet programme).
