Regions That Can Be Described as Type I, Type II, or Type III Regions

Learning goals: students become familiar with and are able to describe these types of regions.

So now we are not restricted to rectangular regions, and are OK as long as our region has a finite
number of boundary pieces that are continuous curves. There are certain kinds of these that play
a particularly important part in the development of the integral.

Definition: A region is a Type I

region if it consists of all (x, y)
� = �� (�)
that satisfy a ≤ x ≤ b for some
real numbers a < b, and h1(x) ≤ y
�=� �=�
≤ h2(x) for some continuous
function h1(x) and h2(x) where,
for all x in [a, b], we have h1(x) ≤
h2(x).

We usually write such a region

as a ≤ x ≤ b, h1(x) ≤ y ≤ h2(x). � = �� (�)
Note that since y might depend
on x, you must write the
restrictions on x first and then
write the restrictions on y that
depend on x.

An example region is shown above. Note that the top and bottom boundaries can meet, and
could meet even in the middle of the figure (they don’t here). The top boundary could go lower
than the bottom outside the range [a, b] as it does here; we really don’t care about what happens
outside that range.

We can also reverse the roles of x and y and define:

Definition: A region is a Type II region if it consists of all (x, y) that satisfy c ≤ y ≤ d for some
real numbers c < d, and g1(y) ≤ x ≤ g2(y) for some continuous function g1(y) and g2(y) where, for
all y in [c, d], we have g1(y) ≤ g2(y).

The picture would look just like the above, but turned on its side. (���)
Many common kinds of regions can be described as type I and type II
regions. For instance, the triangle at right can be described as:
• Type I: 0 ≤ x ≤ 1, x ≤ y ≤ 1
• Type II: 0 ≤ y ≤ 1, 0 ≤ x ≤ y
The technique is to find hard, numerical limits in x (y), and then find functions of x (y) that
determine the top and bottom (sides) of the figure.
(���) (���)
Let’s try some:

The triangle at right can be described as:

• Type I: 1 ≤ x ≤ 2, 4 – 2x ≤ y ≤ 2
• Type II: 0 ≤ y ≤ 2, 2 – y/2 ≤ x ≤ 2

(���) (���)

The piece of the parabola shows at left can be described as:

• Type I: 0 ≤ x ≤ 2, x2 ≤ y ≤ 4
� = �� • Type II: 0 ≤ y ≤ 4, 0 ≤ x ≤ y

The area under the arch of the sine curve shown here is:
• Type I: 0 ≤ x ≤ π, 0 ≤ y ≤ sin(x)
• Type II: 0 ≤ y ≤ 1, arcsin(y) ≤ y ≤ π – arcsin(y)

Consider the circle of radius two around the origin. It

has equation x2 + y2 = 4. So we can solve for y in terms
of x as y = ± 4 − x 2 . Then we describe the disk as the
type I region –2 ≤ x ≤ 2, − 4 − x 2 ≤ y ≤ 4 − x 2 . We
can reverse the roles of x and y to get a type II region.

Now consider the region at right:

If the triangles go up to (1, 1) and (–1, 1), we can easily
describe this as a type I region: –1 ≤ x ≤ 1, 0 ≤ y ≤ |x|.
But this is not a type II region. We could easily write it
as a union of two type two regions, but not as a single
one. It’s as if there were a “vertical line test” for type I
regions and a “horizontal line test” for type II regions—
the appropriate kind of line can only intersect the
region in a single interval.

Definition: if a region is both type I and type II, we call it type III.

Though we’ll discuss it more thoroughly later, you can also imagine moving into three (or more)
dimensions with the same idea.
Example: describe the interior of the cone whose base is the unit disk in the xy-plane, and which
has a height of 2. (So its vertex is at (0, 0, 2).)

Solutions:
1) One trick we could use would be to use a fixed range in z first: 0 ≤ z ≤ 2. Then for any
particular z the cross section would be a disk of radius 1 – z/2. We already know how to describe
disks from a previous example, so we could describe the cone putting the variables in order z-x-y
as 0 ≤ z ≤ 2, –(1 – z/2) ≤ x ≤ (1 – z/2), − (1− z / 2)2 − x 2 ≤ y ≤ (1− z / 2)2 − x 2 .

2) Another trick would be to use cylindrical coordinates! We would have 0 ≤ θ ≤ 2π, 0 ≤ r ≤ 1,

and then the height over any particular point is 2 – 2r, so 0 ≤ z ≤ 2 – 2r.

3) We could combine these tricks and obtain 0 ≤ z ≤ 2, 0 ≤ r ≤ 1 – z/2, 0 ≤ θ ≤ 2π.

4) We could actually solve for how high z is over a particular point (x, y), which we know from
solution 2) is 2 – 2r. Translating this to Cartesian we would get: –1 ≤ x ≤ 1,
− 1− x 2 ≤ y ≤ 1− x 2 , 0 ≤ z ≤ 2 − 2 x 2 + y 2 .