Integral of ln(x) with Feynman's trick!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- Another integral with Feynman's trick: • It took me 3 hours to ...
We can integrate ln(x) with integration by parts, but are there other sneaky ways to do it? Thanks to Tizio Caio for requesting this challenge!
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I feel like destroying an ant with a cannonball
May be, destroying the ant with cannon ball makes it easier to target the elephant 🐘
😂😂
@@PrasannaKumar-zx7gr oh nice
@@Invincible2203 HI
My favorite way to evaluate this integral is with my right hand.
Mine I with my left(yes I'm replying after 2 years)
Selim Akar🔥🔥🔥 görse duygulandırdı
I can’t do math rn because my right hand is busy 😢
@@herobrine1847uhh 🤨
@@lakshshastry8278 your hand is next
My favorite way to evaluate this integral is to recognize that this is just negative the integral of e^x from negative infinity to zero.
Rotating the graph is the graph of the inverse. ln(x) and e^x are inverses.
Actually it is the reflection.
@@SMEEST55 Yes, a reflection in the line y = x.
Fred
It would be nice to explain intuitively( without formulas) why e^-x and xe^-x have the same area from 0 to infinity..(as this integral suggests)
Simone Dartizio
Draw it on a piece of paper and see for yourself.
Its pretty much just reflected on both the x and y axis
Wow. Splendid. I think this “trick outside the box” is in fact a much more intuitive approach at understanding Feynman integration in general. Really nicely done. Thank you!
Steve K.
I think, just in case someone doesn’t know one “but” of Feynman’s technique, you should remind that it is necessary to check the uniform convergence of considered integral in order to be able to differentiate it under the integral sign.
Thank you. That exact thing had crossed my mind.
@@mrnogot4251 By the way, recently I've watched video where it was told that in 99% cases you can just try to use the technique and, if you got the finite answer, then everything is OK and differentiation under the integral sign is allowed.
@@regulus2033 physicists usually never bother checking that things converge lol
I suggest you to search about the dominated convergence theorem and a corollary that (roughly speaking) states that if you have a function f(t,x) such that its partial derivative with respect to t is, in absolute value, uniformly bounded by an integrable function g(x), then the Feynman technique holds
@@regulus2033 Maths is not about being correct 99% of the time...
thanks for a well-thought-out and well executed video. i' m a mathematician myself and i really enjoyed it.
X^t was a brilliant idea in the solution.
It's a more general way of producing ln()s inside integrals. So if you want (ln(x))^2 in an integral, you just introduce x^t, evaluate the integral and then differentiate it twice
Well, my trick for this would be to swap coordinates.
y = lnx ; x = eʸ
When lnx → 0⁺, y → -∞; when lnx = 1, y = 0.
And lnx is negative in the (open) interval of integration, while eʸ is positive in its interval. So there will be a sign change, and:
∫₀¹ lnx dx = - ∫₋₀₀⁰ eʸ dy = -1
Done. But it could be argued that this is equivalent to integration by parts.
EDIT: And I see mine is not the only comment using this trick.
Fred
You missed a y there (that was supposed to be in front of e^y)
@@That_One_Guy... I missed more than that. My 3rd line doesn't follow from my 2nd line. Those 2 lines should have been:
y = lnx ; x = eʸ
When x → 0⁺, y → -∞; when x = 1, y = 0.
The rest is OK; it works as written. All I'm really doing, is flipping the graph about the y=x axis, then integrating the area w.r.t. y.
Fred
@@That_One_Guy... you are right, although not matters on result
How the hell did you write those symbols
@@andreaq6529 Some of them are available in macOS using option & command keys, or Keyboard Viewer; some of them I've copy-pasted from other people's posts.
In Windows, there's a way to generate them as Unicode characters, but I don't know the details of that; I think you can discover them by poking around the web a bit.
"remember a partial derivative means everything not t is a constant" I love scaring my students about multivariable calc and when we start with partial derivatives they all go like "wait: it´s that easy?" They were expecting some ultimate hell. And then i always go like "i never said the maths would be hard. but getting that curved d right will be a nightmare for anybody not used to cursive" They usually want to kill me^^ and yeah that was a really clever idea to just reverse Feynman´s technique. (and please call it a technique trick sounds cheap. Usub for me is a "trick" elevated to the status of a technique by usefulness. Feynman´s technique is the same incredibly useful and also a very elegant use of the leibnizrule. (strictly speaking they are not the same as you know better than me. It is strictly speaking allowing us to switch Integral- and differential operators.Feynman is still rthe guy who thought "well I can crack a couple of tough nuts with that"^^)
I've been just recently learning Feynman's trick, and my brain went melty when you started going backwards 🫠 rewatching 😂
Thank you. This helped a lot.
I’m trying to learn Feynman’s technique, but in my class at school we didn’t even study logarithms and exponential so I’m learning calculus by myself.
"x.ln(x) - x" is a primitive of ln(x)
Noureddine I know.
The same way Feynman did!:D
Wait how are you learning calc if you haven't learned precalc? Or did you mean your school hasn't covered precalc yet?
@@pbj4184 The second one. One year and smt ago we were at precalc at school, now we are covering derivatives
x^t was really clever
It's a more general way of producing ln()s inside integrals. So if you want (ln(x))^2 in an integral, you just introduce x^t, evaluate the integral and then differentiate it twice
Wow, the method looks fire, and the way you're teaching it is even more fire!
I love the fact that it's Feynman's "trick", and not his theorem or other such posh word. He would have loved that!
My favourite way to integrate ln X is to call it 1 times ln X . Then you can call the integral of 1xln(X) xln(x) - integral of x(1/x) which turns out to be xln(x)-x+c
that's called integration by parts and this video isn't about it
@@BLVGamingY you missed his joke
@shragdharkunal1258 if yes, i apologize profusely. may i get a short explanation
When I saw the thumbnail I tried to do it without parts and here is my approach. 1: Use kings law for definite integrals to convert it to the integral of ln(1-x). Expand that(Taylor series) integrate the polynomials and then plug values. You will get a infinite series that is fairly easy to evaluate and hence get the answer -1.
I did the same thing
hi this is very old, but i hope you could possibly explain in more detail what you did to solve it this way please :)
@@joo_21applying king's property/change of coordinates gives the integrand ln(1-x).
Using the Taylor series of ln(1-x) gives -sum((x^n)/n) from n = 1 to inf.
Consider the sequence of functions {f_n} where f_i (x) = (x^i)/i. We see that this is a sequence of polynomials which are continuous over Real numbers, and the limits of integration are finite, hence the functions in this sequence are integrable wrt x and their integrals do not diverge.
Hence by fubini's theorem, we can interchange the integration and summation and we get (with the integral now): -sum(integral((x^n)/n)) = -sum((1^{n+1} - 0) / ((n+1)n)) = -sum(1/((n+1)n)), from n = 1 to inf.
This is a standard telescoping sum.
Consider the partial summation -sum(1/((n+1)n)) from n = 1 to k. We can rewrite this as -(sum(1/n) - sum(1/(n+1))) from n = 1 to k, which is equal to -(1 - 1/(k+1)). Taking the limit of this partial sum as k goes to infinity yields the summation: -sum(1/((n+1)n)) from n = 1 to inf which is -1
We can solve this by inverse function relationship between exp(x) and lnx
Intrgral 0 to 1 lnxdx= -[integral 0 to infinite exp(-x) dx = exp(-x)]0 to infinite = -1
i like this
I used your method to evaluate the indefinite integral of ln|x|^k. I used the Leibniz rule for integration and the general Leibniz rule. I let I(t) = integral of x^t such that the nth derivative of I(t) = integral of the nth partial derivative of x^t = integral of ln|x|^n * x^t dx. I then used the power rule to evaluate I(t), and the general leibniz rule to evaluate the nth derivative of that. I simplified where I could, replaced every n with a k and t with a zero, then ended up with a finite sum (assuming k is finite). Very nice I thought.
This integral equations of ln(x) and others are well explained and comprehended from the professor's explanation. Truly yours Sir!
While trying this myself I just realised that you can also find it by realising that since exp(x) is the inverse of ln(x), which means its the graph reflected in y=x. If you interpret the required integral as the area, it will be te same as the integral of exp(x) from -inf to 0. this has a nice convergence to 1. Since ln(x)< 0 on [0,1] this means the area is -1. and hence the integral is -1. Might sound a shabby but ey.
what a negative area means?
@@reycali6124 it means that the area is under the x axis.
it's just a fancy notation to make you understand where it's located on the plan.
Is it only me with this unique methode
Take xlnx, differentiate it you get lnx + 1
Now integrate again so
Int(lnx) + int(1) = xlnx
Int(lnx) = xlnx - x = x(lnx-1)
Now put limits zero to 1
x(lnx - 1) tends to zero when x tends to zero
And at 1 the value is -1
So answer -1
This feels like something I should have learnt (or at least memorised) in 1971, when Vince Pauley introduced me to the wonder of integral calculus. Alas, that was too long ago.
Feynmans method can be expressed conceptually as differentiation in t followed by integration in x followed by integration in t to back out the original differentiation.
Your method merely reverses the order of operations, viz integration in t followed by integration in x followed by differentiation in t to back out the original integration.
One might say it’s still Feynmans method but in reverse. However note there is one other difference. There is no requirement to evaluate C since it essentially vanishes with the differentiation at the end.
Which approach will prove effective depends on whether the derivative or antiderivative of the function is easier to integrate.
Yours is a clever insight of what’s going on under the hood with Feynmans method. This is the second time I’ve seen a video on the unorthodox usage but I’ve seen a few other more complicated written examples where it comes into play.
Wonderfully useful way feynman technique. Thank you for the video sir!
It is certainly fine to know Feynman's trick applied to integrals, he used it exactly as it stands, as a trick! One of his lemma was to shut up and calculate, simple that! But we must have in mind that in the end it might make sense, not just use it as a bypass. This is my message. The true knowledge is in calculus itself. I still use calculus as it was taught to me long time ago: u-substitution, integration by parts or partial fractions.
Pretty slick trick.
Knowing how the integral from -inf to 0 of e^x is 1, it makes sense intuitively that this integral evaluates to -1.
Honestly, I didn't expect this video could be *Super Cool* ... But it was!
*Great* ... *Sure Cool* ...
(Actually you teach another way of thinking about Math and it's great too.)
I love Feynman (he's my favorite scientist) and he brings me here and now I'm so happy.
Great example and definitely the different example of Feynman's Method.
Thank you so much ❤️
My students would be asking why I was making it so hard when Integration by Parts does it much easier. I usually introduce differentiating inside the integral with an example where the integrand does not have an integrand which is an elementary function.
Thank you Mu Prime! That x^t is awesome!
Nice approach.... Love from Bangladesh 🇧🇩
This was really neat!
My intuitive awnser to ln(x)dx from 0 to 1 was to integrate e^x from ln(0) = -inf to ln(1) = 0. e^(-inf)-e^0 = -1
Thank you, its hard to find a full fledged explanation of this technique online.
This is a pretty scatterbrained explanation tbf
Differentiating Integration of Integral
Feels like he's a right handed and trying to be left handed.
Cant wait to use this in my multivariable calc class for absolutely no reason since we havent done this yet and Im not sure we will
Let 0
You can make substitute x=u+1 and then define I(t)=ln(ut+1) and then I(0) = 0
Brilliantly done thanks for it sir
Very well explained. Good job.
This is brilliant, thank you
I love your BpRp shirt!! Really nice video!!!
you're a great teacher
x=e^(-u)
x in (0,1) implies u in (infinity,0)
dx=-e^(-u)du
ln(x)=-u
integral is just -Gamma(2)=-1
My favorite way to evaluate this integral is Symbolab
Excellent explanation! Thanks.
Real clever mate. Well explained.
Sans diminuer de l'importance de la méthode de Feynman qui évite le recours à l'analyse complexe, mais dans le cas présent c'est comme tirer une mouche avec un canon.
La méthode classique consiste à faire le changement de variable log(x) =u, x=exp(u), dx=exp(u)du
Soit int(uexp(u)du) entre les bornes -inf et 0. Une intégration par parties donne directement le résultat recherché -1.
ou encore calculer directement la primitive de lnx en posant u'=1 et v=lnx on a diretement xlnx-x et par le calcul evident de la limite aux bord de l'integrale on obtient -1
@@omar.ma7
Bien vu ! Pour la limite pathologique xlog(x) au voisinage de 0, faire le changement de variable x=1/y, ce qui ramène à la limite de -log(y) /y au voisinage de l'infini, laquelle est égale à 0, résultat bien connu.
I have yet to take calc 3, I’m wearing with baited breath for spring semester to come, and I hope this kind of content will become available to me soon. I’m seeing partial derivatives, the part of calculus I didn’t get to in high school, and I am finally gonna start learning new stuff. It’s been ages since I’ve felt motivated like this.
You have yet to learn your real name!
Calc. 3 is way easier than Calc. 2 so you'll be fine!
@@TrinidaddyGdom where lmao
it's very easy to evaluate this intégral by parts you complicated it man
Thanks for this. I now know how to change the difficulty settings for calculus 2. Got so bored at easy mode.
I just started to reacquaint myself with calculus, and new videos are beginning to roll through. I've watched quite a few hours of mathy stuff this month, and you do great work.
You provide excellent descriptions of the thought process. That was a great explanation of the Fineman approach. I can tell - I understood your explanation while you gave it, and I could almost replicate it on a piece of paper without looking back to the video.
Where were you 35 years ago - when I could have used you in DifEq?!?
Great work :)
Are there any integral questions we can't solve by laplace but we can solve by feynman's technique?
Here's an example of a difficult integral with Feynman's technique: th-cam.com/video/Y6ZQMgk3A8s/w-d-xo.html
sure, Fresnel Integral, Gaussian Integrals, Ahmed's integral, integral of Sinx/x from 0 to \infty to name a few exceptional ones.
@@farhannoor3935 The last one's called the Dirichlet integral
I actually think that the formula of udv is more suitable for this integral , but the idea of the video is nice too
Thank You
Isn't ln(x) one of the integrals we should have memorized? It's -x+x•ln(x). Evaluated at 0 is 0. Evaluated at 1 is -1+1•ln(1). ln(1) is zero, so the integral is equal to -1+0-0=-1.
Very beautiful demonstration! But you have to be careful with the bound x=0! In almost every formula or transformation of your theory you have to exclude x=0! And the definition of intrgral_0^1 lnx is
Lim_a->0^+ Integral_a^1 lnx dx. But if you calculate that definition with the antiderivative x lnx - x you find with the rule if De L'Hópital lim_a->0^+ (a lna) =0 and the limit value really is -1 . So a strict mathematical analysis of this indefinite integral Integral_0^1 lnx dx really equals -1. I am delighted! 😀
I think, this solution is very complicated. If you need the result without integration by parts and without substitution, you can use , exp x is inverse function to ln x. Then - integral(exp x) from -infinity till 0 = integral from lnx for x = 0 till 1
Interesting and smart. But there is a much easier way to calculate that integral: knowing that logarithm is the inverse function of the exp, that integral equals minus integral from minus infinity to zero of exp(x) dx, which is easily seen to equal minus 1.
By the way, Feynman used this technique when he was working on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. He solved in one day a problem that other physicists were stuck on for month.
i love your t-shirt "Calculus Finisher" which i feel like to win calculus marathon ^^
This is surprisingly cool.
Here we can also think the integral given is the area traced the the curve lnx and -ve y and +ve x axis so its inverse fuction e^x curve will have the same area between -infinite to 0 so the integral becomes Integration of e^x from 0 to -infinite (as y becomes +ve in this)= -1
Well I guess it's much easier if you just use ( t ) and limit as t approaches 0, similar to the way we deal with improper integrals. Good video though!
HOW VERY INTERESTING
MY eyes hurt so much watching integration videos nonstop for 12 hours+ but just one more and I shall
Finally sleep
Using integration by parts
U=ln x first function
V=1 second function
Apply u. V formula of integration with get
X(ln x - 1) ৷¹
0
=-1
Forget the mathematics. You are a fine THINKER. You could do anything in life.
I'm sure this is considered thinking outside the box to you, but to me it's climbing out of the box, getting on a rocket ship and landing on Pluto. Feynman's technique scares me as it is without futzing around with it like that. I just hope I can eventually reach this kind of level.
Good work!
Tizio caio, hai il mio rispetto🇮🇹🇮🇹🇮🇹🇮🇹
That's brilliant 👏... thanks for this beautiful tip (outside the box 🤪). 😉
Its very easy to calculate this integral by using integration by part in few steps.
Differentiating under the integral sign (in a rigorous way) was known for hundreds of years before Feynman.
Why just dont use: lnx=lnx*1, and use udv=uv-vdu
This video was meant as a fun challenge to see if we could solve the integral with Feynman's trick, without using integration by parts!
Aleksander Vadla I was chilling and I was thinking a non standard way to integrate this integral. I tried Feynman’s technique but I failed, so I asked this guy.
Here's an inside the box way of getting the result without using by parts. Since the integral of e^x from infinity to 0 is symmetric to that of ln x from 0 to 1, we know the area of the latter will be the negative of that of the former.
I was quite surprised that the integral was not ∞. But it does make sense, cuz the integral from -∞ to 0 of e^x is 1.
Really good video.
Explicas de maravilla, deberías de buscar alguien que ponga subtítulos en español, por que a veces los latinos no tenemos buen inglesb
No pienso que nadie tenga el conocimiento y el tiempo para traducirlo, pero ¡me encanta que usted esté mirando mis videos!
@@MuPrimeMath guess I've got both of them
yo hablo español y un poco de ingles y creeme que se entendió todo de verdad explicas genial amigo sigue así
@@MuPrimeMath Why not just do t tomes ln of x at 5:31 as opposed to x^t..it's simpler and I think what most ppl would've thought of?
For the last time, this is Leibnitz rule of differentiation inside an integral sign. Don't know why people call it otherwise.
Hmmm just a linear transformation would suffice
Awsome..to see a common thing in a different way is science
I can't see the the advantage of forcing a certain method , in particular in such a simple case. Write the integrand as 1* lnx and integrate by parts and you are finished immediately.
Distributive large
1:00, 2:20 And more foundational: Of course, one hast to justify WHY you can interchange the integration with the differentiation for t in the first place... but physicists and so on ;).
Дифференцировать под знаком интеграла можно только если он сходится равномерно. Differentiating under a sign an integral is possible only if he meets evenly.
Не используй машинный переводчик.
I could watch this video til the end thanks to the cute instructor. Wish I'd had a cute math tutor like him
You can't derivate the function inside the integral without any justification, you have to use the theorem of derivation of an integral with parameter, there are hypothesis that you must verivy before using it
We cas add 1_1 it will be ln x + 1 -1 = lnx + x/x -1 = (xlnx)' - x'
clearly explained
Minor nitpick: @ 1:55 it should be integral(d(I(t)))
This is Hadamard finite part integral.
Good stuff!
Pretty cool! 😎
(xlnx)'=1+lnx. So lnx=1+lnx-1=(xlnx)'-1. Then one antiderivative of lnx is xlnx -x, which you now evaluate at 1 and 0 to get -1. Look, Ma. No integration by parts!
I simply "knew the answer was x ln(x) - x"
At 0 it approaches 0
At 1 it's -1
So it must be -1
(Watched video to check I was right)
need to check why we could interchange the derivative, limit and integration.
I figured it out, but I kinda cheated by trying to do it by parts to try and see where I am going. Anyway, I managed, but it took longer than I want to admit, considering it was an approach so simple.
Edit: and the reason was : I didn't bother evaluating the polynomial term (x^t) to get -1. Perhaps looking at the basic things might make you see the path to solving something seemingly unbreakable. Lesson learned again, I thank you.
Now the really important question is where do I get that wallpaper? 😆
Why everyone on youtube forgets to proof the unifotm convergance of those integrals? It the main and hardest part of feynmam technique
Nice alternative, nonetheless looks slower with the respect of integration by parts
a left-hand person so rare , i am also a left-hand person