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Some variants of the integral mean value theorem

German Lozada-Cruz

To cite this article: German Lozada-Cruz (2021) Some variants of the integral mean value
theorem, International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 52:7,
1124-1130, DOI: 10.1080/0020739X.2020.1822555

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Published online: 29 Sep 2020.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
2021, VOL. 52, NO. 7, 1124–1130
https://doi.org/10.1080/0020739X.2020.1822555

CLASSROOM NOTE

Some variants of the integral mean value theorem

German Lozada-Cruz
Departamento de Matemática, Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE) – Universidade
Estadual Paulista (UNESP), São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, Brazil

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This note deals with some variants of the integral mean value Received 21 January 2020
theorem. Mainly a variant of Sahoo’s theorem and a variant of Way-
KEYWORDS
ment’s theorem were proved. Our approach is rather elementary and Integral mean value
does not use advanced techniques from analysis. The simple auxiliary theorem; Wayment’s
functions were used to prove the results. theorem; Sahoo’s theorem
2010 MATHEMATICS
SUBJECT
CLASSIFICATIONS
24A06; 26A24; 26A42

1. Introduction
The ancient problems that appear in history related to integrals are quadrature problems,
that is, when the ancient geometers began to study the areas of regions on the plane, they
related them to the area of the rectangle, because this is the simplest plane figure. Thus they
tried to find a rectangle that has the same area as the region in question. This brings us to
the fundamentals of the integral calculus (Boyer, 1959).
After the first contact of our mathematics or engineering undergraduate students with
the integral calculus, we can study the integral mean value theorem, where we need to find
a rectangle with the same area of the region under the graphic of a real function f defined
in a certain interval [a, b]. The calculation of rectangle areas for the students is easier.
The mean value theorems are useful tools of mathematical analysis. The first mean value
theorem is the famous Lagrange’s mean value theorem (Lang, 2005, Theorem 2.3; Protter
& Morrey, 1991, Theorem 4.12; Sahoo & Riedel, 1998, Theorem 2.2) and it states that if
f is continuous on [a, b] and differentiable on (a, b), then there exists c ∈ (a, b) such that
the tangent line to the graph of f at c is parallel to the secant line connecting (a, f (a)) and
(b, f (b)).
The second mean value theorem is the Cauchy’s mean value theorem (Protter & Mor-
rey, 1991, Theorem 4.14; Sahoo & Riedel, 1998, Theorem 2.17), which is a generalization
of Lagrange’s mean value theorem.
The third mean value theorem is the integral mean value theorem (Protter & Mor-
rey, 1991, Theorem 5.6; Sahoo & Riedel, 1998, Theorem 7.1). It asserts that a continuous

CONTACT German Lozada-Cruz german.lozada@unesp.br, german@ibilce.unesp.br Departamento de

Matemática, Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE) – Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), São José
do Rio Preto, São Paulo 15054-000, Brazil

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 1125

function on a bounded closed interval has at least one point where it is equal to its average
value on the interval.
Now, for the sake of completeness we first state Lagrange’s theorem and some variants
of it (Flett’s theorem and Myers’ theorem).

Theorem 1.1 (Lagrange’s Theorem): Let f : [a, b] → R be a continuous function on [a, b]

and differentiable in (a, b). Then there exists η ∈ (a, b) such that

f (b) − f (a) = f  (η)(b − a). (1)

Flett (1958) gave the first variant of Lagrange’s mean value theorem.

Theorem 1.2 (Flett’s Theorem): Let f : [a, b] → R be a differentiable function on [a, b]

and f  (a) = f  (b). Then there exists η ∈ (a, b) such that

f (η) − f (a) = f  (η)(η − a). (2)

For a geometrical interpretation of Flett’s theorem, see Hutník and Molnárová (2015).
Myers (1977) proved a slight variant of Flett’s theorem.

Theorem 1.3 (Myers’ Theorem): Let f : [a, b] → R be a differentiable function on [a, b]

and f  (a) = f  (b). Then there exists η ∈ (a, b) such that

f (b) − f (η) = f  (η)(b − η). (3)

The geometric interpretation of Myers’ theorem is similar to that of Flett’s theorem

(Myers, 1977).
Sahoo and Riedel (1998, Theorem 5.2) gave a generalization of Flett’s theorem where
they removed the boundary condition f  (a) = f  (b) on the derivative of f.

Theorem 1.4 (Sahoo–Riedel’s Theorem): Let f : [a, b] → R be a differentiable function

on [a, b]. Then there exists η ∈ (a, b) such that

1 f  (b) − f  (a)
f (η) − f (a) = f  (η)(η − a) − (η − a)2 . (4)
2 b−a

Çakmak and Tiryaki (2012, Theorem 2.1) proved a slight modification of Sahoo–Riedel
theorem (Theorem 1.4) which reduces to Myers’ theorem (Theorem 1.3) when f  (a) =
f  (b).

Theorem 1.5 (Cakmak–Tiryaki’s Theorem): Let f : [a, b] → R be a differentiable func-

tion on [a, b]. Then there exists η ∈ (a, b) such that

1 f  (b) − f  (a)
f (b) − f (η) = f  (η)(b − η) + (b − η)2 . (5)
2 b−a

Now, we state the Integral mean value theorem and some variants of it (Wayment’s
theorem and Sahoo’s theorem).
1126 G. LOZADA-CRUZ

Theorem 1.6 (Integral mean value theorem): If f : [a, b] → R be a continuous on [a, b],
then there exists ξ ∈ (a, b) such that
 b
(b − a)f (ξ ) = f (x) dx. (6)
a

From the geometric point of view, Equation (6) tells us that the area under the graphic of
function f from a to b is equal to the area of the rectangle of sides b−a and f (ξ ) (Figure 1).
Wayment (1970) proved an integral version of Flett’s mean value theorem.

Theorem 1.7 (Wayment’s Theorem): If f : [a, b] → R be a continuous function on [a, b]

and f (a) = f (b), then there exists ξ ∈ (a, b) such that
 ξ
(ξ − a)f (ξ ) = f (x) dx. (7)
a

Sahoo (2007) removed the boundary condition of Wayment’s theorem and gets the
following result.

Theorem 1.8 (Sahoo’s Theorem): If f : [a, b] → R be a continuous function on [a, b], then
there exists ξ ∈ (a, b) such that
 ξ
1 f (b) − f (a)
(ξ − a)f (ξ ) − (ξ − a)2 = f (x) dx. (8)
2 b−a a

Figure 1. Geometric interpretation of integral mean value theorem.

 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 1127

The main motivation of this note is the Sahoo’s paper (Sahoo, 2007) where he proved a
generalization of Integral Wayment’s theorem (Theorem 1.7). And to do this he used some
simple auxiliary functions.
In this note, other variants of the integral mean value theorems are proved (Theo-
rems 2.3 and 2.6 in Section 2). And to get these we use some simple auxiliary functions,
also. Thinking about these issues and in a way to develop student’s skills and competencies
in manipulating these functions and, consequently, understanding the proofs in this work,
this is the main goal of this note.

2. Main results
In this section, we prove some variants of the integral mean value theorem.
First we prove a variant of Sahoo–Riedel’s Theorem.

Theorem 2.1 (Lozada-Cruz, 2020): Let f : [a, b] → R be a differentiable function on

[a, b]. Then there exists η ∈ (a, b) such that
n f  (b) − f  (a)
f (η) − f (a) = f  (η)(η − a) − (η − a)n+1 , n = 0, 1, 2, . . . . (9)
n + 1 (b − a)n

Proof: Let n be a non-negative integer and consider the auxiliary function ψ : [a, b] → R
given by ψ(x) = f (x) + λ(x − a)n+1 , where λ ∈ R. We choose λ in such a way that the
condition ψ  (a) = ψ  (b) holds true.
We can see that ψ is differentiable on [a, b] and ψ  (x) = f  (x) + (n + 1)λ(x − a)n .
Then
1 f  (b) − f  (a)
ψ  (a) = ψ  (b) ⇔ f  (a) = f  (b) + (n + 1)λ(b − a)n ⇔ λ = − .
n + 1 (b − a)n
1 f  (b)−f  (a)
Thus the auxiliary function takes the form ψ(x) = f (x) − n+1 (b−a)n (x − a)
n+1 which

satisfies the conditions of Flett’s theorem (Theorem 1.2). Then there exists η ∈ (a, b) such
that ψ(η) − ψ(a) = ψ  (η)(η − a) and the conclusion follows. 

Remark 2.1: If n = 0 in (9), we get the Flett’s theorem (Theorem 1.2).

If n = 1 in (9), we get the Sahoo–Riedel’s theorem (Theorem 1.4) (also see Hutník
& Molnárová, 2015; Sahoo & Riedel, 1998).
If n = 2 in (9), we get a slight variant of Sahoo–Riedel’s theorem

2 f  (b) − f  (a)
f (η) − f (a) = f  (η)(η − a) − (η − a)3 .
3 (b − a)2

Now we prove a variant of Ç akmak–Tiryaki’s theorem.

Theorem 2.2 (Lozada-Cruz, 2020): If f : [a, b] → R is a differentiable function on [a, b],

then there exists η ∈ (a, b) such that
n f  (b) − f  (a)
f (b) − f (η) = f  (η)(b − η) + (b − η)n+1 , n = 0, 1, 2, . . . . (10)
n + 1 (b − a)n
1128 G. LOZADA-CRUZ

Proof: Let g : [a, b] → R given by g(x) = f (a + b − x). The function g satisfies

Theorem 2.1. Then, there exists c ∈ (a, b) such that

n g  (b) − g  (a)
g(c) − g(a) = g  (c)(c − a) − (c − a)n ,
n + 1 (b − a)n−1
which implies
 
 n − f  (a) + f  (b)
f (a + b − c) − f (b) = −f (a + b − c)(c − a) − (c − a)n .
n+1 (b − a)n−1
Now, putting η = a + b − c we obtain (10). 

Remark 2.2: If n = 0 in (10), we get Myers’s theorem (Theorem 1.3).

If n = 1 in (10), we get Çakmak–Tiryaki’s theorem (Theorem 1.5).
If n = 2 in (10), we get a slight variant of Çakmak–Tiryaki’s theorem

2 f  (b) − f  (a)
f (b) − f (η) = f  (η)(b − η) + (b − η)3 .
3 (b − a)2

Now we prove our first main result of this section, that is, a variant of Sahoo’s theorem
(Theorem 1.8).

Theorem 2.3: If f : [a, b] → R is a continuous function on [a, b], then there exists ξ ∈ (a, b)
such that
 ξ
n f (b) − f (a)
(ξ − a)f (ξ ) − (ξ − a) n+1
= f (x) dx, n ∈ N. (11)
n + 1 (b − a)n a
x
Proof: Apply (9) to the function F : [a, b] → R given by F(x) = a f (t) dt, x ∈ [a, b]. 

The following result is a variant of Wayment’s theorem.

Theorem 2.4: If f : [a, b] → R is a continuous function on [a, b] and f (a) = f (b), then
there is ξ ∈ (a, b) such that
 b
(b − ξ )f (ξ ) = f (x) dx. (12)
ξ

The following result is a variant of Theorem 2.4 when the boundary condition f (a) =
f (b) is removed.

Theorem 2.5: If f : [a, b] → R is a continuous function on [a, b], then exists ξ ∈ (a, b)
such that
 b
1 f (b) − f (a)
(b − ξ )f (ξ ) + (b − ξ )2 = f (x) dx. (13)
2 b−a ξ

Now we prove our second main result, that is, a variant of Theorem 2.5.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 1129

Theorem 2.6: If f : [a, b] → R is a continuous function on [a, b], then there exists ξ ∈ (a, b)
such that
 b
n f (b) − f (a)
(b − ξ )f (ξ ) + (b − ξ )n+1
= f (x) dx, n ∈ N. (14)
n + 1 (b − a)n ξ

b
Proof: Consider the function G : [a, b] → R defined by G(x) = x f (t) dt, x ∈ [a, b].
Now, applying (10) to the function G there exists η ∈ (a, b) such that

n G (b) − G (a)
G(b) − G(η) = G (η)(b − η) + (b − η)n+1
n + 1 (b − a)n
and from this follows the conclusion. 

Remark 2.3: If n = 1 in (14), we get Theorem 2.5.

If n = 2 in (14), we get

2 f (b) − f (a) b
(b − ξ )f (ξ ) + (b − ξ )3 = f (x) dx
3 (b − a)2 ξ

which is a slight variation of (13).

3. Conclusion
In this note, some variants of integral mean value theorem were proved (Theorems 2.3
and 2.6). To do these, some elementary auxiliary functions were used. There are also other
proofs of the main theorems using the primitive of a function f (see proof 2 of Theorems 2.3
and 2.6).
It is important to point out that the use of simple auxiliary functions to prove the
type of integral mean value theorems is an effective didactic resource (Sahoo, 2007; Way-
ment, 1970). This has already been seen in the proof of Lagrange’s and Cauchy’s mean value
theorems (Lozada-Cruz, 2019, 2020; Myers, 1977).

Acknowledgments
The author is really thankful to the referees for their suggestions which improved this note.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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