What you’ll learn to do: Interpret definite integrals
In the preceding section we defined the area under a curve in terms of Riemann sums:
[latex]A=\underset{n\to \infty }{\lim} \displaystyle\sum_{i=1}^{n} f(x_i^*)\Delta x[/latex].
However, this definition came with restrictions. We required [latex]f(x)[/latex] to be continuous and nonnegative. Unfortunately, real-world problems don’t always meet these restrictions. In this section, we look at how to apply the concept of the area under the curve to a broader set of functions through the use of the definite integral.
