Inspired by the definition of an integral: $\int^b_af(x)dx=\lim_{n\to∞} \Delta x \sum^{n}_{i=1} f(x^*_i)$.
I wanted to create an equation that finds the average height for all the points on an interval "a b" of a function. So I came up with this equation: $$\lim_{n\to∞}\frac{1}{n}\sum^{n}_{i=1}f(a+i\Delta x)$$
Where $\Delta x=\frac{b-a}{n}$. I noticed that the "average equation" is very similar to the definition of an integral. In fact, it is equal to $\frac{\int^b_a f(x)dx}{b-a}$ or the integral divided by distance between a and b. I was wondering conceptually why these two ideas are related in this way.
Best Answer
An average is a sum of datapoints divided by the size of the dataset. The integral formula you gave is the continuous version of this: the integral gives the continuous sum of datapoints in an interval $[a,b]$, and $b-a$, the length of the interval, is the size of the dataset.
There is also a geometric interpretation. Let's look at the formula you gave. The integral gives the area under the function in the interval $[a,b]$. Let's say we took that area and smoothed it out so it was rectangular-shaped, with width $[a,b]$ and some height. It would be geometrically reasonable to call this height the average height of the function. And we can get the height by dividing the area (the integral) by the width ($b-a$) -- your formula.
The formula you gave does come up as an average, e.g., in the Mean Value Theorem for Integrals.