I was doing this complex integration question:
$$\int_{c}f(z)dz$$ where $f(z) = z^{2}-3$ and the curve is the union of segments $[0,i]$ and $[i,1+2i]$. I tried to parametrize the curve in two different ways and see what I got.
First parametrization:
$C = it,\;0\le t \leq1$ and $C = t-1+it,\;1\le t \leq2$
$$\int_{c}f(z)dz=\int_{0}^{1}f(it)(i)dt + \int_{1}^{2}f(t-1+it)(i+1)dt$$
when I evaluate this, I end up getting
$$\frac{-20}{3}(1+i)$$
The second parmaterization I picked was
$C = it,\;0\le t \leq1$ and $C = (1+i)t +i,\;0\le t \leq1$
This time when I compute the integral, I get
$$\int_{c}f(z)dz=\int_{0}^{1}f(it)(i)dt + \int_{0}^{1}f(t+it+i)(i+1)dt$$
to be equal to $-(\frac{20}{3} + \frac{61i}{12})$
The answer to the first integral was from an answer key I found online and the second integral I evaluated using wolfram alpha. I thought that it shouldn't matter which way you parameterize it. I was wondering whether someone can explain why I'm getting different answers?
Since the left summands are equal in both expressions, I only worried about the right ones. I entered both into wolfram alpha and let it compute the difference, for me it returned zero. My exact query:
I apologize for not adding this as a comment, my reputation does not allow that yet.