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I have a colleague in the English dept. who is wondering the reason why the word "integral" came to be used to represent the process by which the area under a curve can be found.

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    In integration, you divide up a region into many small slices, estimate the areas of the slices separately, and add them together to get the area of the whole. Assembling many small parts into a whole is a common meaning of "integrate", which is derived from Latin *integer*, meaning "whole" or "entire". I hope it would not be too rude to suggest that your colleague in the English department should learn to look things up in an English-language etymological dictionary.2012-11-15
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    Other quantities can also be integrated too. One can integrate density over space to get mass, velocity over time to get displacement, deposits/withdrawals/interest over time to get wealth, values weighted by probabilities to get averages, etc. So this speaks more generally to the idea that a range of quantities are being stitched together over said range. Don't know if these other viewpoints would have factored into the original naming process though.2012-11-15
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    Integrals are not necessarily related to the calculation of areas. That is one *application* of integrals, but that's all.2012-11-15
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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burn_centers_in_the_United_States (@MJD... Nice)2012-11-15

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