Trig substitution is a fancy kind of substitution used to help find the integral of a particular family of fancy functions. These fancy functions involve things like a2 + x2 or a2 – x2 or x2 – a2 , usually under root signs or inside half-powers, and the purpose of trig substitution is to use the magic of trig identities to make the roots and half-powers go away, thus making the integral easier. One particular thing the students struggle with is choosing which trig substitution to do.
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The blog post references a YouTube video with worked examples, that you can watch here:
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