How to find the reduction formula[edit]

The reduction formula can be derived using any of the common methods of integration,
like integration by substitution, integration by parts, integration by trigonometric
substitution, integration by partial fractions, etc. The main idea is to express an integral involving
an integer parameter (e.g. power) of a function, represented by In, in terms of an integral that
involves a lower value of the parameter (lower power) of that function, for example In-1 or In-2. This
makes the reduction formula a type of recurrence relation. In other words, the reduction formula
expresses the integral

in terms of

where

How to compute the integral[edit]
To compute the integral, we set n to its value and use the reduction formula to
calculate the (n 1) or (n 2) integral. The higher index integral can be used to
calculate lower index ones; the process is continued repeatedly until we reach a
point where the function to be integrated can be computed, usually when its index is
0 or 1. Then we back-substitute the previous results until we have computed In.
[2]

Examples[edit]
Below are examples of the procedure.
Cosine integral
Typically, integrals like

can be evaluated by a reduction formula.

, for n = 1, 2 ... 30
Start by setting:

Now re-write as:

Integrating by this substitution:


Now integrating by parts:

solving for In:



so the reduction formula is:

To supplement the example, the above can
be used to evaluate the integral for
(say) n = 5;

Calculating lower indices:


back-substituting:



where C is a
constant.