Thursday, 2 June 2016

calculus - How to quickly solve partial fractions equation?



Often I am dealing with an integral of let's say:



$$\int\frac{dt}{(t-2)(t+3)}$$



or



$$\int \frac{dt}{t(t-4)}$$




or to make this a more general case in which I am interested the most:



$$\int \frac{dt}{(t+\alpha)(t+\beta)} \quad \quad \alpha, \beta \in \mathbb{R}$$



Basically any integral with decomposed polynomial of second degree in the denominator. Obviously this leads to sum of two natural logarithms.



What I do is write down partial fractions equation and then solve system of linear equations (2 variables here):



$$\frac{1}{(t+\alpha)(t+\beta)} = \frac{A}{t+\alpha} + \frac{B}{t+\beta}$$




After solving this I end up with some $A, B$ coefficients and I can solve the integral.



Is there faster way to find $A, B$ ? Some algorithm or anything that I can follow and would always work for such case? Surely, solving that does not take much time but I just wonder if it could be done even faster.



(bonus question: what if there were more variables, like 3 variables?)



I would greatly appreciate all feedback as it could help me save countless number of minutes in the future.


Answer



Here's your answer
for general $n$.




$\dfrac1{\prod_{k=1}^n (x-a_k)}
=\sum_{k=1}^n \dfrac{b_k}{x-a_k}
$
.



Therefore
$1
=\sum_{k=1}^n \dfrac{b_k\prod_{j=1}^n (x-a_j)}{x-a_k}
=\sum_{k=1}^n b_k\prod_{j=1, j\ne k}^n (x-a_j)
$
.




Setting
$x = a_i$
for each $i$,
all the terms
except the one with $k=i$
have the factor $a_i-a_i$,
so
$1 = b_i\prod_{j=1, j\ne i}^n (a_i-a_j)
$


so that
$b_i
=\dfrac1{\prod_{j=1, j\ne i}^n (a_i-a_j)}
$
.



For $n=2$,
$b_1
=\dfrac1{a_1-a_2}
$
,
$b_2

=\dfrac1{a_2-a_1}
$
.



For $n=3$,
$b_1
=\dfrac1{(a_1-a_2)(a_1-a_3)}
$
,
$b_2
=\dfrac1{(a_2-a_1)(a_2-a_3)}
$
,

$b_3
=\dfrac1{(a_3-a_1)(a_3-a_2)}
$
.


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