I think that shows how great the trapezoidal rule is. I feel like this is brought out too many times, that now it is used to make fun of people. It is 18 years old at this point.
Edit: actually the paper was written in 1994, not sure what the "18 years" was referring to. But still, peer review existed and so did maths books... Even if the author can be excused somewhat (and that's already a stretch), peer reviewers should definitely not let this fly.
Some of us when learning calculus wonder if we'd been alive before it was invented, if we'd be smart enough to invent it. Dr. Tai provably was. (the trapezoid rule, anyway) So I choose to say xkcd 1053 to her, rather than bullying her for not knowing advanced math.
No, we have no proof of that. We just know that she published a paper explaining the trapezoidal rule.
(A) That approximation for 'nice' curves was known long before calculus. Calculus is about doing this in the limit (or with infinitesimals or whatever) and also wondering about mathematical niceties, and also some things about integration. (B) I'm fairly certain she would have had a bit of calculus at some point in her education, even if she remembered it badly enough to think she found something new.
And what makes you less of a peer is not knowing the basics. And being so unaware of apparently not knowing the basics, and/or uninterested, that you don't bother to check something that is highly checkable.
This is why peer review exists. One can not known everything themselves. It's fairly common for CS paper submissions to reinvent algorithms and then tone down the claims after reviewers suggest that variants already exist.
in 1994?
I know how to find the area under the curve, but there's so much biology I don't know jack shit about. Back in 1994, It would have been hopeless for me to know the Michaelis-Menten model even existed if it had been relevant to my studies in computer science. That you can right click on those words in my comment in 2025 and get an explanation of what that is and can interrogate chatgpt to get a rigorous understanding of it shouldn't make it seem like finding someone in the math department to help you in 1994 was easier than just thinking logically and reinventing the wheel.
So did the author of the paper. The paper’s title itself mentions the area under a curve. It would not have been difficult to find information about how to calculate an approximation of the area under a curve in the library.