what is the difference between Numerical integration and integration using syntax?

I am trying to solve close integration in MATLAB using numerical integration. But I am confuse in numerical integration and integration using syntax. Are they same or not??

[Stephen23]

@Swapnil Narke: what exactly is "integration using syntax"? Do you mean symbolic integration?:

https://www.mathworks.com/products/symbolic.html

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

Um, are you a bit confused? Your question is highly confusing. ANY computation done on a computer, numerical or not, uses syntax.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/syntax

Are you asking about symbolic integration versus numerical integration? No, they are not the same, although one (symbolic) is arguably a superset of the other. So you could compute a symbolic definite integral, returning a pure number, with no symbolic parameters involved at all.

The converse is generally not true, although you could use some simple numerical integration rules (trapezoidal rule, for example) on a symbolic problem, thus returning a symbolic result.

However, many numerical integration methods cannot be applied to symbolic problems, because they are adaptive methods.

Essentially, if your problem involves symbolic constants that are unknown at the time of computation, then you cannot use a numerical integration tool (traps, quad integral, etc.)