A friend of mine points me to an odd little paper called “A mathematical model for the determination of total area under glucose tolerance and other metabolic curves”, published back in 1994 by an “M M Tai”. From the abstract:
To develop a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves from various metabolic studies. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS–In Tai’s Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from their respective geometrical formulas. The total sum of these individual areas thus represents the total area under the curve.
The real kicker is the last sentence, which sh0uld sound familiar to anyone who’s taken advanced mathematics: The total sum of these individual areas thus represents the total area under the curve. That’s right, he’s re-invented the common integral.
What’s even better is that this one paper is a citation in over 75 other papers! FlipTomato has the whole story on his blog.
Okay, you might argue that unlike physicists, not everyone in the world takes calculus. Fine—but if you’re a scientific researcher dealing with numbers and data, I should hope that you’ve had a complete high school mathematics curriculum. Isn’t calculus required for med school, anyway?
What I find really interesting is that the abstract notes that the Tai Model is significantly more accurate than other `widely applied’ methods. What could these other `widely applied’ methods have possibly been?
