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Finding Square Roots Using Newton's Method: Math 202 Jerry L. Kazdan

This document describes Newton's method for finding square roots. It explains that Newton's method provides a recursive formula for obtaining better approximations of a solution to an equation by using the tangent line to the graph of the function at the current approximation point. The document applies Newton's method to compute square roots, derives the recursive formula, and proves that the approximations converge to the true square root. It also provides an example computation that achieves remarkable accuracy in only a few steps of Newton's method.

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Rupesh Pawar
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
119 views2 pages

Finding Square Roots Using Newton's Method: Math 202 Jerry L. Kazdan

This document describes Newton's method for finding square roots. It explains that Newton's method provides a recursive formula for obtaining better approximations of a solution to an equation by using the tangent line to the graph of the function at the current approximation point. The document applies Newton's method to compute square roots, derives the recursive formula, and proves that the approximations converge to the true square root. It also provides an example computation that achieves remarkable accuracy in only a few steps of Newton's method.

Uploaded by

Rupesh Pawar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Math 202 Jerry L.

Kazdan

Finding Square Roots Using Newton’s Method

Let A > 0 be a positive real number. We want to show that there is a real number x with
x2 = A. We already know that for many real numbers, such as A = 2, there is no rational
number x with this property. Formally, let f x) := x2 − A. We want to solve the equation
f (x) = 0.
Newton gave a useful general recipe for solving equations of the form f (x) = 0. Say we
have some approximation xk to a solution. He showed how to get a better approximation
xk+1 . It works most of the time if your approximation is close enough to the solution.
Here’s the procedure. Go to the point (xk , f (xk )) and find the tangent line. Its equation
is
y = f (xk ) + f ′ (xk )(x − xk ).
The next approximation, xk+1 , is where this tangent line crosses the x axis. Thus,

f (xk )
0 = f (xk ) + f ′ (xk )(xk+1 − xk ), that is, xk+1 = xk − .
f ′ (xk )

Applied to compute square roots, so f (x) := x2 − A, this gives


 
1 A
xk+1 = xk + . (1)
2 xk

From this, by simple algebra we find that


1
xk+1 − xk = (A − x2k ). (2)
2xk

Pick some x0 so that x20 > A. then equation (2) above shows that subsequent approxi-
mations x1 , x2 , . . . , are monotone decreasing. Equation (2) then shows that the sequence
x1 ≥ x2 ≥ x3 ≥ . . . , is monotone decreasing and non-negative. By the monotone conver-
gence property, it thus converges to some limit x.
I claim that x2 = A. Rewrite (2) as A − x2k = 2xk (xk+1 − xk ) and let k → ∞. Since
xk+1 − xk → 0 and xk is bounded, this is obvious.

We now know that A exists as a real number. then it is simple to use (1) to verify that
√ 1 √
xk+1 − A= (xk − A)2 . (3)
2xk

Equation (3) measures the error xk+1 − A. It shows that the error at the next step is the
square of the error in the previous step. Thus, if the error at some step is roughly 10−6 (so
6 decimal places), then at the next step the error is roughly 10−12 (so 12 decimal places).

1

Example: To 20 decimal places, 7 = 2.6457513110645905905. Let’s see what Newton’s
method gives with the initial approximation x0 = 3:

x1 = 2.6666666666666666666 x2 = 2.6458333333333333333
x3 = 2.6457513123359580052 x4 = 2.6457513110645905908

Remarkable accuracy.

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