Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/ia/paper-1/12d/solution

It is enough to treat an increasing function; replacing by handles a decreasing one. Let be the common refinement of dissections and . Refinement raises lower Darboux sums and lowers upper ones, so
For the uniform dissection , monotonicity gives the telescoping difference
This can be made smaller than any , so the Riemann integrability criterion proves that is integrable.
The integral lies between the lower and upper sums, and the displayed sum in the question is the right-endpoint upper sum. Hence the generally valid sharp estimate is
The strict inequality printed in the question is false for arbitrary monotone functions: if for and , the two sides of (1) are both .
For the final claim, write
Since is continuous on a compact interval, it is uniformly continuous. Uniformly for ,
After the substitution , summing the uniform errors gives
The right-hand sum is a Riemann integral, so the fundamental theorem of calculus yields

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