Introduction to Irregular Figures

A figure which is not uniform and regular in shape is an irregular figure. There are several practical situations where it is necessary to estimate the area of irregular figures; for example, the areas of plots of land, areas of indicator diagrams of steam engines and areas of ships by naval architects, etc. Since these areas cannot be obtained by the simple application of a formula, there are many methods whereby the area of an irregular plane’s surface may be found. Some of these include:

(a) Trapezoidal Rule

(b) Simpson’s Rule