Re: NIntegrate of a Decaying Exponential
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg15176] Re: [mg15137] NIntegrate of a Decaying Exponential
- From: Robert Pratt <rpratt at math.unc.edu>
- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 00:27:53 -0500
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
The exact answer can be obtained by hand by using the substitution u =
-v^2. The integrand then becomes E^u. Applying the Fundamental
Theorem of Calculus, we get E^(-4) - E^(-1) as the exact answer.
Integrate[-2v Exp[-v^2],{v,-1,2}] yields the same result.
Note that since -2v Exp[-v^2] is an odd function, the integral from -1
to 1 is 0. Hence it should be no surprise that
Integrate[-2v Exp[-v^2],{v,1,2}]
also gives the exact result obtained above.
Rob Pratt
Department of Mathematics
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill CB# 3250, 331 Phillips
Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3250
rpratt at math.unc.edu
http://www.math.unc.edu/Grads/rpratt/
On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Wretch wrote:
> Greetings -- I'm trying to get Mathematica to do an integral that
> appears regularly in plasma physics problems. It appears to give the
> right answer, but it's always accompanied with an annoying error
> message whose roots are a bit vague. Here is the function to be
> integrated:
>
> f = -2 v Exp[-v^2] over the v-interval (-1,2)
>
> The answer should be about -.34956 (according to an IMSL subroutine)
>
> Here's the mathematica input and output:
>
> In[1]:=NIntegrate[-2 v Exp[-v^2],{v,-1,2}] Out[1]:=Out[99]=-0.349564
>
> NIntegrate::"ploss":
> "Numerical integration stopping due to loss of precision. Achieved \
> neither the requested PrecisionGoal nor AccuracyGoal; suspect highly \
> oscillatory integrand, or the true value of the integral is 0. If your
> \ integrand is oscillatory try using the option Method->Oscillatory in
> \ NIntegrate."
>
> So, Mathematica gets it right, but with the mysterious warning. The
> error/warning message isn't surprising since the integrand has such a
> sharp peak at v=0, but none of the options specified in the help menu,
> such as MinRecursion, MaxRecursion, Method->, etc. were of any use in
> suppressing this error message. I want to suppress messages of this
> sort not only so that I don't have to look at them, but also to have an
> extra measure of confidence that the answer is actually right!
>
> Any help is greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> AC