Some weeks back, during a Math Teachers Workshop being conducted by the AMTI at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai, for a group of teachers from the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalas, one of the teachers (Mr Sasi Kumar, of Palakkad, Kerala) posed a challenge to the group: the evaluation of a definite integral. It proved to be very challenging indeed. Indeed, no one got it.
On getting back and struggling with it for some days I finally cracked it. I have posted the solution here: ToughIntegral.
What is interesting to me is that it resisted all my attempts at an elementary solution. I wonder if there exists any such solution at all. My solution ultimately had to depend on Cauchy's Residue Theorem. If some reader finds an elementary solution, I would be most interested in seeing it.
On getting back and struggling with it for some days I finally cracked it. I have posted the solution here: ToughIntegral.
What is interesting to me is that it resisted all my attempts at an elementary solution. I wonder if there exists any such solution at all. My solution ultimately had to depend on Cauchy's Residue Theorem. If some reader finds an elementary solution, I would be most interested in seeing it.
