What was the average temperature over that period? We could answer this by imagining that is not a quantity function but a rate function. Instead of being expressed in degrees, we could think of as being expressed in degree-hours per hour. (With unit analysis, we see that this made-up unit is really just degrees, as hours per hour “cancels” out.) Then we could calculate how many degree-hours accumulated over this period, using Pattern 7.4.4 to assist with the calculation.
But this isn’t really a rate, we were only pretending it was a rate in the made-up units of degree-hours per hour. Ignoring the hours-per-hour, it seems that the average temperature over that twenty-four hour period was approximately 17.9 °C.
Figure13.1.3.Average temperature over a twenty-four-hour period.
In each term of the sum, we are multiplying a temperature in degrees against a small time duration in hours, so the product is in units of degree-hours.
And then when we calculated , we divided our accumulation in degree-hours by the full duration of 24 h, so that this quotient ended up in units of degrees Celsius.
Graphically, if we think of the definite integral in this definition as an area, then we are dividing that area by the full width to obtain an average height:
But we should also compare our definition of Average value of a function with our definition of Average rate of accumulation — what if we apply our definition above to the case of a rate function ? Will we be calculating average rate of accumulation as we’ve defined it in Definition 11.1.2? Our definition of average rate is that it is the constant rate that produces the same accumulation as the varying rate function over a given time period. For a constant rate we have
Finally, let’s compare this integral-based notion of average value with our previous notion: given values , the average of these values is defined to be
Let’s return to the situation of Example 13.1.1, where represents the temperature in some outdoor location at time over a twenty-four hour period, but this time suppose we haven’t modelled with a formula. We could approximate by making temperature measurements throughout the day, perhaps at the end of every hour:
where now because the in is measured in hours. More generally, if we were to record the temperature at regular intervals, times during the day, we would calculate
Adding things up over shorter time intervals to get a better approximation is starting to sound like a Riemann sum. If we were to create a (regular) Riemann sum for function over domain , we would start with
where the sample points might be at the end of each time interval between readings, the above summation is a right regular Riemann sum! This means we can turn the approximation into an equality by replacing the Riemann sum with an integral:
The analysis strategy in Example 13.1.8 is a powerful method in engineering and the sciences: if you can interpret an approximation to some value as a Riemann sum, then you can calculate that value exactly with an integral.
The Mean Value Theorem says something inherently intuitive: given an average value for some quantity that is varying, it’s not possible for that quantity to have remained above average for the entire period, nor to have remained below average for the entire period. And if the function is continuous, that means it must have crossed through its average value at some point.
Let be a time in where achieves its least value, and let be a time in where achieves its greatest value. Then over our domain, the area under the horizontal line must be less than the area under the graph of . In other words, if we think of as a rate function, the accumulation at the slowest rate must be less than the true accumulation. Similarly, the area under the horizontal line must be greater than the area under the graph of . (Or, the accumulation at the fastest rate must be greater than the true accumulation.)
(a)The total accumulation is always greater than accumulation at the lowest rate.
(b)The total accumulation is always less than accumulation at the highest rate.
Figure13.2.2.Comparing accumulation at the minimum and maximum rates.
Since is assumed to be continuous, it is not possible for its values to have “jumped” over on its way from to (or vice versa, in the case that is earlier than ). That is, we may apply the Intermediate Value Theorem to conclude that there is some time between and where .
Figure13.2.3.A continuous function must achieve its average value.
Suppose you leave your home and drive to a destination 100 km away, and the trip takes about an hour. Then your average speed was approximately 100 km⁄h. But you most likely were driving much slower than that at the beginning and end of the trip, as you probably had city speed limits and traffic to deal with. Which means that to have averaged 100 km⁄h, you must also have been travelling faster than that for some period, to average out with your slower speeds. From this we make a slightly stronger conclusion than that in the Mean Value Theorem: your speedometer must have read exactly 100 km⁄h at least twice during your trip, once when you accelerated from your initial slower speeds to your later higher speeds, and again when you decelerated from your later higher speeds to slower speeds near the end of your trip.
We have learned how to use a Riemann sum to approximate an accumulation from the rate function . Since the true accumulation value always lies between the upper and lower Riemann sums, for an integrable function we can “squeeze” the upper and lower sums together by using more, skinnier rectangles in our sums until the upper and lower sums are so close together that we can determine the true accumulation value. We called this value the definite integral for the rate function and the domain over which we were computing an accumulation. By using a variable endpoint for accumulation calculations, we can create an accumulation function. Using Pattern 6.4.7, we can combine an accumulation function with an initial value to recover the quantity function .
We have also learned how to use average rates of variation to approximate an instantaneous rate of variation from values of a quantity function . Over shorter and shorter time intervals for the average rate calculations, if all such approximations are arbitrarily close to some particular value, we call that value the derivative value for the quantity function at the particular instant in question, and we interpret it as the rate of variation of the quantity function at that instant. By “stitching” together derivative values at different instants together into a function called the derivative function for the quantity function. Again, interpreting values of as instantaneous rates of variation, it is reasonable to think that in forming the derivative function we have recovered the rate function, so that .
If this is the case, then performing both processes should return us to where we started: if we begin with a rate function , use an accumulation function based on a definite integral of to obtain a quantity function, and then compute the derivative of that quantity function, we should be back at the original rate function. Intuitively, this is beyond doubt. However, mathematically there is no reason to think this should be true, as the two processes involved have seemingly nothing to do with each other: one process uses rectangles to approximate an area, the other process uses secant-line slopes to approximate a tangent-line slope. Why would performing one process after the other return you to where you started? But, in fact, our intuition based on rates, quantities, and accumulation is correct.
Now, Pattern 11.7.9 says that a discontinuous function cannot be differentiable, so since our accumulation function is differentiable it must be continuous, at least at all points in the domain . At the endpoints and it is more complicated, and we leave that justification to your further study of calculus, if you undertake it.
If we accept that a definite integral does in fact measure accumulation, then Theorem 13.3.1 confirms that a derivative function is a rate function, as we had proposed in Principle 12.1.2. If is a quantity function with associated rate of variation function , then from we can recover the quantity function using Pattern 6.4.7:
where the value of represents the accumulation of quantity that occurred over the domain from time up until time . Applying the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus to compute the derivative function returns us to the rate function, as expected:
It is good that we got the same result both times! While this by itself does not imply that our accumulation formula for the sine function (Pattern 10.5.1) is correct, it certainly gives us more confidence.
Carry out the same comparison of derivative calculations of the accumulation function created out of a cosine rate function , using the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus on the one hand, and using Pattern 10.5.2 and Pattern 12.6.8 on the other.
What if we begin with a quantity function ? Suppose we take the derivative as the rate function, , and then use that to re-form a quantity function. Except at first, there is not yet a mathematical reason to expect that we will end up back at , so let’s write
for this quantity function, where again represents a chosen “initial value” . How is related to ? We at least know that they have the same derivative function: using an identical calculation as in Remark 13.3.2, differentiating the formula for above arrives at
For and in Definition 13.4.1, while we say that is the derivative of , we are careful to say that is an antiderivative of , because in fact a function that has an antiderivative always has an infinite number of antiderivatives.
This tells us that both and are antiderivatives of the function . And because the derivative of a constant is , we could change the plus-one part of the formula for to be any other constant and it would still be an antiderivative for .
What functions have antiderivatives? That is, what functions are derivative functions? That is a big question, but the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus provides an important partial answer.
Now we return to the question that began the section, where we created a function that had the same derivative as another, and asked how the two functions were related. First, we can make the pattern of Example 13.4.3 more general.
As a derivative function is a rate function, having uniformly equal to says that the function never varies, so it must be a constant function . As was defined as the difference of and , we have
Suppose and are two functions so that . If we write to represent this shared derivative function, then both and are antiderivatives of that function, and we are in the situation of Fact 13.4.6 with in place of and in place of .
What about two different accumulation functions? If the function is continuous on a large domain, when creating an accumulation antiderivative as in Fact 13.4.4, we can choose any base point for the lower bound of our definite integral that we like. So, starting with continuous , we can create two different antiderivatives
from the rate function . Then we end up with , and Fact 13.4.6 says that must be a vertical shift of . This is almost back where we started — differentiating and then integrating that derivative returns us back to a vertical shift of our original function. However, in creating , we can choose to be any value we want, so in fact it is possible to have the differentiation-integration cycle come full circle.
and every other antiderivative is a vertical shift of . So we can express this family of antiderivatives using a parameter to represent that vertical shift:
Here is a small table of indefinite integrals. You should compare with the accumulation function formulas we have encountered in Chapter 7–10, and note where we have vertically shifted those formulas to more simply express the family of antiderivatives, similarly to Example 13.5.4. You should also compare with the differentiation formulas from Chapter 12, as the derivative of the formula for each indefinite integral (with , always) should equal to the integrand function in the indefinite integral.
This integral represents an accumulation over time domain for a quantity that varies according to rate function , so we can use our accumulation formula
(Pattern 9.6.1) to first compute the accumulation over , and then subtract out the accumulation over that we have included in that first calculation but shouldn’t have:
Normally we would use the natural logarithm function to compute a definite integral involving this rate function (see Definition 8.1.1), but this integral is over a negative domain. Instead we use the expanded logarithm function as an antiderivative, so
.
Figure13.6.5.Symmetric areas under the graph of the reciprocal function.
The area represented by this definite integral is below the horizontal axis, and so is negatively oriented. Using the symmetry of the graph of the rate function , this area should be equal in magnitude to the area represented by the definite integral
On the other hand, we now know that the derivative function describes the rate of accumulation of , so we expect a definite integral of to also represent an accumulation. Pattern 13.6.2 confirms this, since is obviously an antiderivative of its own derivative, so