No label defined (Q3154381)

This is an unusual book about the techniques of computing definite integrals. This topic has undergone a life cycle which perhaps is not surprising: first extensively studied in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, then a long oblivion ja stagnation and finally a renewed interest in the subject. In particular, the progress of the symbolic computation during the past fifty years (e.g. the Risch algorithm for symbolic integration) and newer discoveries (such as the work of Wilf and Zeilberger) are behind the recent interest. The authors write in the preface that they started the book with the naive idea to prove every formula in the encyclopedic handbook of Gradshteyn and Ryzhik, but they soon realized that this task was monumental. They cite a famous remark of G. H. Hardy ``I could never resist an integral''. In addition to the classical methods they extensively apply the symbolic computation language \texttt{Mathematica} in their work. The authors use the Wilf-Zeilberger method for summation. The contents could perhaps be best overviewed by listing several of the titles of the individual chapters: exponential and logarithmic functions, trigonometric functions and \(\pi\), a quartic integral, the normal integral, Euler's constant, Eulerian integrals, the Riemann zeta function, logarithmic integrals. A large number of results from classical analysis can be found here either stated in refined or generalized form or applied so as to get new results. Some of these are the Wallis formula, the Stirling formula, the Euler-Maclaurin formula, the Legendre identities for the zeta-function and several of the Ramanujan formulas. Also many well-known infinite product formulas and series can be found here. The authors have managed to write a very readable account about integrals, accessible even to advanced undergraduates. Some of the topics of the book could be used for undergraduate reading and research projects. This way the book could serve as a ``springboard to many unexpected investigations and discoveries in mathematics'' (cited from the preface).