The substitution u=tan2x has been called by Spivak "the world's sneakiest substitution". Suppose your goal is to integrate
∫3−5sinxdx.
What would you do? There are four main basic methods of integration - partial fractions, parts, trigonometric substitution, and u− substitution. The first doesn't work because the denominator is already a binomial that can't be factored, and the second because there isn't a way to find two functions that would simplify the problem. Trigonometric substitution fails because if you substitute an inverse trig function, an ugly differential appears, and if you substitute a regular trig function, it becomes even worse as you wind up with nested trigonometric functions. Thus u− substitution is the only remaining tool that we have left. But finding a good substitution is difficult, as substituting a regular function of x or 2x doesn't help because you have the dx term still unaccounted for. This is where the u=tan2x substitution comes in.
Before applying this substitution, we should probably investigate exactly how strong it truly is. Firstly, from the basic double-angle formula for sine, sinx=2sin2xcos2x=2tan2xcos22x. Now by a bit of manipulation we can express the result entirely in terms of our new u: we have that 2tan2xcos22x=sec22x2u=1+tan22u2u=1+u22u.
Similarly, we can express cosx in terms of u as well: we have that cosx=1−2sin22x=1−2tan22xcos22x=1−2u2(1+u21)=1+u21+u2−2u2=1+u21−u2.
Finally, we can also find dx in terms of u and du, since dxdu=21sec22x=21+tan22x=21+u2, so thus dx=1+u22du.
In our particular case, we have
∫3−5sinxdx=∫3−5(1+u22u)1+u22du
This still looks a bit messy, but now multiplying the numerator and denominator by 1+u2 and rearranging a bit gives
which is a lot easier to evaluate than our original integral. In fact, the denominator factors nicely to (3u−1)(u−3), and additionally we have that 2=41(3u−1)−43(u−3) Thus we have that
While the result isn't a nice expression, at least we were able to antidifferentiate the given function. In fact, this method can reduce any rational function in terms of sine and cosine to a different rational function in terms of just the new variable u.