Another way to do this is to show your understanding that the
trapezoidal rule approximates areas by using piecewise straight lines in the form of a
0 + a
1x which is identical to an area of a trapezium.
For each sub-interval, draw new piece-wise straight lines, there should be a picture of this, if you look carefully or better yet zoom into it, the blue lines should be under the red curve of the actual function complimenting the explanation.
Trapezoidal rule becomes important in second-year engineering mathematics and chances are most possible functions cannot be evaulated by direct integration (a.k.a. analytically).