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[Axiom-mail] Non elementary integration


From: Stefano Simonucci
Subject: [Axiom-mail] Non elementary integration
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 11:05:13 +0200
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050802 Debian/1.7.10-1


Hi.
In the axiom manual I find

"Integration is the reverse process of differentiation, that is, an integral of a function f with respect to a variable x is any function g such that D(g, x) is equal to f.
....
Given an elementary function to integrate, Axiom returns a formal integral as above only when it can prove that the integral is not elementary and not when it cannot determine the integral. In this rare case it prints a message that it cannot determine if an elementary integral exists.

Now if I write
integrate(exp(x)/x,x)
I obtain
Ei(x)
while if I write
integrate(exp(x)/x^2,x)
I get a form integral. But the integral of exp(x)/x^2 can be given in terms of Ei(x) as exp(x).
In fact I believed that the axiom can be able to find the solution that is

integrate(exp(x)/x^2,x) --> Ei(x)-exp(x)/x

But from the manual I deduce that exp(x)/x^2 can be prooved not elementary integrable. Why exp(x)/x is integrable while exp(x)/x^2 not?

Thank you
            Stefano





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