Submitted by Meryjoy99 on Thu, 04/06/2017 - 21:11
Hello
I have a doubt concerning mainly the especification (both STEP II and III). The syllabus states that use of partial fractions to integrate rational functions is required (and I´m okay with that). When I learnt this at school (i'm not doing Alevels), we also saw how to proceed in case we found a denominator (with degree two) with complex roots. I would like to know if this is included on A-levels, so that it would be possible to find it on any of the step papers...If it has ever appeared, do you remember the year and paper??
In addition, my teacher said that if any of us were interested in learning how to proceed when the denominator has complex roots and degree more than two, he could teach this to us after the normal lesson. Is this case included in STEP?? Even if it is not, would you recommend me to learn it? (might it be useful for something else?Is it mathematically interesting?)
Thanks so much!
No, it's not in STEP. There
No, it's not in STEP. There are other ways to proceed with partial fraction decomposition if you have irreducible quadratics (over $\mathbb{R}$) in the denominator. You could learn it if you wanted to, I suppose it could be useful for checking answers if you had to but certainly not necessary). As to whether it's mathematically interesting or not, that'll depend on the person: to me it sounds like simply looking at a different field ($\mathbb{C}$) to decompose over, which isn't particularly interesting in and of itself.
Thanks
Thanks
No problem.
No problem.