"Symbolic integration" is when you theatrically go through the motions of finding integrals, but the actual result you get doesn't matter because it's purely symbolic.

"Differentiation and Integration", by Randall Munroe, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License

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"Symbolic integration" is when you theatrically go through the motions of finding integrals, but the actual result you get doesn't matter because it's purely symbolic.