Earlier in this series, I gave three different methods of showing that
Using the fact that is independent of , I’ll now give a fourth method. Since is independent of , I can substitute any convenient value of that I want without changing the value of . As shown in previous posts, substituting yields the following simplification:
,
where and are the positive numbers so that
,
,
so that
At this point in the calculation, we can employ the now familiar antiderivative
,
so that
.
Now it remains to simplify this fraction. To do this, we note that
,
so that
Matching coefficients, we see that
,
Since both and are positive, we see that from the last equation. Therefore,
Plugging these in, we finally conclude that
,
again matching our earlier result.
Using the fourth method, I’ve shown that for the cases and . With tomorrow’s post, I’ll consider the remaining case of .
I'm a Professor of Mathematics and a University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of North Texas. For eight years, I was co-director of Teach North Texas, UNT's program for preparing secondary teachers of mathematics and science.
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