Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2022 / ia / Paper 1 / 12D / Solution

It is enough to treat an increasing function; replacing $f$ by $-f$ handles a decreasing one. Let $\mathcal{R}$ be the common refinement of dissections $\mathcal{D}$ and ${\mathcal{D}}^{\prime }$. Refinement raises lower Darboux sums and lowers upper ones, so

For the uniform dissection ${\mathcal{D}}_n=\{k/n:0\le k\le n\}$, monotonicity gives the telescoping differenceThis can be made smaller than any $\epsilon >0$, so the Riemann integrability criterion proves that $f$ is integrable.

The integral lies between the lower and upper sums, and the displayed sum in the question is the right-endpoint upper sum. Hence the generally valid sharp estimate isThe strict inequality printed in the question is false for arbitrary monotone functions: if $f(x)=0$ for $x<1$ and $f(1)=1$, the two sides of (1) are both $1/n$.

For the final claim, writeSince $F^{\prime }$ is continuous on a compact interval, it is uniformly continuous. Uniformly for $0\le t\le 1$,After the substitution $x=(k-1+t)/n$, summing the uniform errors givesThe right-hand sum is a Riemann integral, so the fundamental theorem of calculus yields

Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.