As we mentioned before, when we are using rectangular coordinates, the double integral over a region
denoted by
can be written as
or
The next example shows that the results are the same regardless of which order of integration we choose.
Evaluating an iterated integral in two ways
Let’s return to the function
from
[link] , this time over the rectangular region
Use Fubini’s theorem to evaluate
in two different ways:
First integrate with respect to
y and then with respect to
x ;
First integrate with respect to
x and then with respect to
y .
[link] shows how the calculation works in two different ways.
First integrate with respect to
y and then integrate with respect to
x :
First integrate with respect to
x and then integrate with respect to
y :
In the next example we see that it can actually be beneficial to switch the order of integration to make the computation easier. We will come back to this idea several times in this chapter.
Switching the order of integration
Consider the double integral
over the region
(
[link] ).
Express the double integral in two different ways.
Analyze whether evaluating the double integral in one way is easier than the other and why.
Evaluate the integral.
We can express
in the following two ways: first by integrating with respect to
and then with respect to
second by integrating with respect to
and then with respect to
If we want to integrate with respect to
y first and then integrate with respect to
we see that we can use the substitution
which gives
Hence the inner integral is simply
and we can change the limits to be functions of
x ,
However, integrating with respect to
first and then integrating with respect to
requires integration by parts for the inner integral, with
and
Then
and
so
Since the evaluation is getting complicated, we will only do the computation that is easier to do, which is clearly the first method.
Evaluate the double integral using the easier way.