Average values of imaginary numbers using integrals, is this result valid or does it even make any sense ??

43 Views Asked by At

Computing average values of complex numbers from a to b

I'm not sure whether we can talk about average values of imaginary numbers using integrals or not. I thought what would be the average value of $e^x$ from $-i$ to $i$. We know that average value of a function from $a$ to $b$ is:

$\frac{\int_a^bf(x)dx}{b - a}$

And if we let $f(x)$ be $e^x$ and $a = -i,b = i$

We might write the average value of the e^x from $-i$ to $ias following:

$avg=\frac{\int_{-i}^{+i}e^xdx}{i - (-i)}= \frac{1}{2i}[e^x]^{+i}_{-i}=\frac{1}{2i}(e^{i}-e^{-i})=\frac{e^i-e^{-i}}{2i} = sin(1)$

I thought it is pretty interesting to find result $sin(1)$ but the real question is:

1) Does this integral even make any sense? What happens if we try to integrate between two imaginary numbers ?

2) Is the average value of complex numbers defined? If so, is it still the same as real numbers ?

Thanks for your answers.