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It depends on the problem.

For integration, you can just derive.

For infinitely many other problems... verification is way harder.




Even for integrals, derivation isn't a silver bullet. You need to derive and also test for equality. Determining whether two expressions are the same (or enough the same, like a being the same as a^2/a except for a=0) can be really hard.


Can't you just check numerical equality at a few million random points?


is it usually the case that derivatives are easier to compute than integrals?


The general algorithm for calculating integrals [1] is rather complex and I guess not suitable for humans so that calculating integrals sometimes looks much more like a black art then calculating derivatives does. On the other hand one could argue that there are algorithms for doing both and so there is no real difference.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risch_algorithm


Yes. Most of the time, the reason is that there is a general form for computing derivatives of products ((xy)' = x'y + xy') and composite functions (chain rule) while no such general rules exist for integrals.


Symbolically, yes that's almost always the case. Numerically it's the other way around.




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