Re: 2012 HSC MX2 Marathon
Haha I didn't think about doing it that way, turns out was easier then I expected. Here's one that I can't do, let's see if one of you can figure it out.
The integral of this cannot be done via elementary methods. I was actually playing around with this very same integral when I was doing MATH1903. One night I was thinking "What will happen if I combine the mutually inverse functions e^x and ln(x) ? Will my math book explode?", so I started working on it.
Using Integration by Parts, we will acquire a very interesting integral:
The power series expansion for this is fascinating, as it involves the Euler-Mascheroni Constant (denoted by a Gamma).
This series can be found by acquiring the Taylor series for the function:
Then integrating the series term-by-term. iirc there is justification required for the convergence of the power series to the integral itself, but nothing too profound.
tl;dr can't do the question using HSC methods.