Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/ia/paper-1/12d/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 ia Paper 1 12D a Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
Assume . The function is bounded, and every interval has lower Darboux sum zero because it contains an irrational. Given , choose so that for . Put small intervals around the finitely many points whose total length makes their contribution to the upper sum less than , and refine their endpoints to a partition. On every remaining subinterval the function is at most , so the upper sum is less than . The Riemann integrability criterion proves that is Riemann integrable with integral zero.
The condition is sufficient but not necessary. Assign when for some positive integer , and otherwise. Then does not tend to zero. Outside a short interval near zero only finitely many unit spikes occur and can be enclosed in intervals of arbitrarily small total length; all remaining values can be made uniformly small except for finitely many further points. The same Darboux-sum argument proves that this is Riemann integrable with integral zero.
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