Suppose we want to find . One way to do this is to simplify the integrand by finding constants and so that
.
This can be done by cross multiplying the fraction which gives
As both sides have the same denominator we must have
This is an equation for so it must hold whatever value is. If we put in we get
and putting gives so .
So we see that
Returning to the original integral
Rewriting the integrand as a sum of simpler fractions has allowed us to reduce the initial integral to a sum of simpler integrals. In fact this method works to integrate any rational function.
Step 1 Use long division (if necessary) to ensure that the degree of is less than the degree of (see Breaking up a rational function in section 1.1).
Step 2 Factor Q(x) as far as possible.
Step 3 Write down the correct form for the partial fraction decomposition (see below) and solve for the constants.
To factor Q(x) we have to write it as a product of linear factors (of the form ) and irreducible quadratic factors (of the form with ).
Some of the factors could be repeated. For instance if we factor as
It is important that in each quadratic factor we have , otherwise it is possible to factor that quadratic piece further. For example if then we can write
We will now show how to write as a sum of terms of the form
and
Exactly how to do this depends on the factorization of and we now give four cases that can occur.
Q(x) is a product of linear factors with no repeatsEdit
This means that where no factor is repeated and no factor is a multiple of another.
For each linear term we write down something of the form , so in total we write
Example 1
Find
Here we have and Q(x) is a product of linear factors. So we write
Multiply both sides by the denominator
Substitute in three values of x to get three equations for the unknown constants,