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Earlier today I was having a little fun with Catalan's constant and its various integral representations: showing that they all do indeed evaluate to the same thing. This got me wondering whether this is always possible, if we are given several integral representations of the same real number. I then thought of a counter-example:

$$\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}e^{-x^2}\;dx=\int_0^{\sqrt{\pi}}dx$$

But I partly put this down to the fact that the integral on the left is non-elementary, whereas the one on the right is not.

What I am more interested in, is: if we consider two elementary integrals such that:

$$\int_a^b f(x)\;dx=\int_c^d g(x)\;dx$$ Does there exist a chain of manipulations which will lead us from one to the other?

One could also ask the same question about non-elementary integrals (edit: it was recently pointed out to me something like this might be a counter-example to this second case).

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Note that there always exist real numers $u,v$, not both zero, such that$$\int_a^buf(x)\,dx=\int_c^dvg(x)\,dx.$$ Thus, such an equality of integrals can hardly be more than condiered "accidental". – Hagen von Eitzen Jan 26 at 17:46
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If, in addition, the integrands are positive, then there is a substitution that converts one integral into the other. This is a special case of Moser's theorem: if two volume forms give the same mass to a compact manifold, one is the pushforward of the other. – user53153 Jan 26 at 17:59
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I won’t downvote, but it seems to me, in agreement with @Hagen, that the rules of this game are so lax that it’s much too easy to win. – Lubin Feb 6 at 21:59
I hate to say it, but if A=B and you want to manipulate A to obtain B, then... you don't have to do anything, just scratch out A and write B, whereas they are equal. Alternatively, multiply A by 1=B/A (assuming A≄0), cancel the A's, and you have B... So clearly, yes, there are manipulations you can do to one definite integral to obtain another, if you know they are equal. – Douglas B. Staple Mar 24 at 3:36
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What happens if you restrict the space that the functions exist in? – yiyi Mar 28 at 7:31

1 Answer

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If I didn't missundertood your question (as I think the commentators did), notice that your question is equivalent to ask if you can transform f(x) into g(x) within two given intervals by stretching/translating (so the segment [a,b] becomes [c,d]) and other transformative operations. The answer is no! unless you want to include arbitrary transformations that could map a function into any other, but in terms of elementary operations with the standard functions we use, this could not be possible in general

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