What is the antiderivative of the natural logarithm of x?

1 Answer
Feb 24, 2017

int \ lnx \ dx =xlnx-x +c

Explanation:

This answer assumes you know how to integrate by parts.

We start by rewriting int \ lnx \ dx as int \ 1xxlnx \ dx.

This is now a product so we can integrate it by parts using the formula: int \ v'u=uv-int \ u'v

We know how to differentiate lnx, so we set u=lnx and v'=1

Integrating v' to get v gives us v=x.
Differentiating u to get u' give us u'=1/x.

We can now substitute this into the formula: int \ lnx \ dx=xlnx-int \ x1/x \ dx

This simplifies to int \ lnx \ dx=xlnx-int \ 1 \ dx

The integral of 1 is x, so int\ lnx\ dx=xlnx-x + c