| Re: Compute area between curves [message #63019 is a reply to message #62876] |
Thu, 16 October 2008 08:50   |
mystea
Messages: 16
Registered: October 2007
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Junior Member |
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Hi James,
I would like to thank you for your reply. It is truly helpful.
Here is an example:
x=dindgen(200)+1
y=x^(-2)
q=dblarr(200)
for i=1,199 do q[i]=int_tabulated(x[0:i],y[0:i])
plot,q
plot,y
plot,deriv(y)
plot,sort(q)
x2=x
x2[60:199]=x2[60]+x2[60]*dindgen(140)
y2=x2^(-2)
q2=dblarr(200)
for i=1,199 do q2[i]=int_tabulated(x2[0:i],y2[0:i])
plot,q2
plot,deriv(y2)
plot,sort(q)
As you can see, the results of integration is wiggling here.
It's not necessary that the polynomial goes negative, its
probably just because the routine is using different polynomials when
new terms
are introduced.
I also figured out that the deriv routine went crazy under some
circumstance, too.
In these cases, deriv(y) should go to zero, yet it was oscillating
crazy.
What is the criteria for deriv to work? Is there a simple-minded
deriv which doesn't
go nuts?
Best,
Gene
On Oct 14, 4:26 am, James Kuyper <jameskuy...@verizon.net> wrote:
> mystea wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>
>> I am also working on a topic where I need to numerically calculate an
>> integral
>> of a tabulated function. However, what I need is an indefinite
>> integral, namely,
>> the area under a curve as a function of x-coordinate.
>
> You can't calculate the true indefinite integral using numerical
> methods; that's something that can only be done by using a symbolic math
> program like Mathematica.
>
>> The procedure int_tabulated only calculates the definite integral,
>> given tabulated
>> f and its x-coordinates x. Let's say both f and x are double array of
>> length nl.
>
>> I tried the following fix:
>
>> integral=dblarr(nl)
>> for i=1, nl-1 do integral[i]=int_tabulated(x[0:i],f[0:i])
>
> What you're getting by this method is not the indefinite integral, but a
> tabulation of definite integrals. This can represent the indefinite
> integral, in much the same sense that your x and f arrays represent the
> function you want to integrate, but it is not the indefinite integral
> itself.
>
>> I thought it will work but not quite! Turns out that in general, the
>> result
>> integral will not be monotone even if f are always positive.
>
> That should not be the case for the true integral of a function that is
> always positive, assuming that the x values are sorted.
>
> However, numerical integration always produces no better than an
> approximation. INT_TABULATED uses a " a five-point Newton-Cotes
> integration formula", which is basically derived from fitting those five
> points to a polynomial. The best-fit polynomial could go to negative
> values within the range of integration, even if all of the data it is
> being fitted to is positive; in that case, the integral could decrease
> with increasing x, for some values of x. That seems unlikely, however,
> if your function is tabulated with sufficient detail.
>
> Could you give a simple example that demonstrates the problem you've seen?
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