Thread: Integration in the real world

Hi there, I am very un-mathsy and would very much appreciate any assistance you can give me with the following real world problem.
I am trying to calculate the total value of subsidies that must be used to support the development of certain renewable generating technologies by determining the area under a curve.
Y = price per unit
X = number of units
A subsidy is paid out on each unit where the cost is above $0.075. I.e. the area under the curve is for values of Y above 0.075 only.
I have determined that the formula for the line is Y=0.095X^-0.074, and the intercepts for X are 1 and 24.
Can someone please in simple terms explain how I integrate this, keeping in mind that I need to calculate the value under the curve for Y values greater than 0.075..

Originally Posted by bbromley

Hi there, I am very un-mathsy and would very much appreciate any assistance you can give me with the following real world problem.
I am trying to calculate the total value of subsidies that must be used to support the development of certain renewable generating technologies by determining the area under a curve.
Y = price per unit
X = number of units
A subsidy is paid out on each unit where the cost is above $0.075. I.e. the area under the curve is for values of Y above 0.075 only.
I have determined that the formula for the line is Y=0.095X^-0.074, and the intercepts for X are 1 and 24.
Can someone please in simple terms explain how I integrate this, keeping in mind that I need to calculate the value under the curve for Y values greater than 0.075..

Reading your description above my first impression was that the area required
was that shown shaded in the attached diagram. But on second thoughts I
think that can't be what you want, so can you provide some clarification.

RonL

Hi Captain, I have attached a simple excel chart and table of data to show what I am trying to calculate. I can use a simple formula in this example, but for some of the curves I am looking at I will have thousands of datapoints, so want to learn how to do it using integration.