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Square Root
Calculus
Example

The Newton-Raphson Method

Already the Babylonians knew how to approximate square roots. Let's consider the example of how they found
approximations to

Let's start with a close approximation, say x1=3/2=1.5. If we square x1=3/2, we obtain 9/4, which is bigger than 2.
Consequently

. If we now consider 2/x1=4/3, its square 16/9 is of course smaller than 2, so

We will do better if we take their average:

If we square x2=17/12, we obtain 289/144, which is bigger than 2. Consequently

2/x2=24/17, its square 576/289 is of course smaller than 2, so

. If we now consider

Let's take their average again:

x3 is a pretty good rational approximation to the square root of 2:

but if this is not good enough, we can just repeat the procedure again and again.
Newton and Raphson used ideas of the Calculus to generalize this ancient method to find the zeros of an arbitrary
equation

Their underlying idea is the approximation of the graph of the function f(x) by the tangent lines, which we
discussed in detail in the previous pages.
Let r be a root (also called a "zero") of f(x), that is f(r) =0. Assume that

. Let x1 be a number close to r

(which may be obtained by looking at the graph of f(x)). The tangent line to the graph of f(x) at (x1,f(x1)) has x2 as its
x-intercept.

From the above picture, we see that x2 is getting closer to r. Easy calculations give

Since we assumed

, we will not have problems with the denominator being equal to 0. We continue this

process and find x3 through the equation

This process will generate a sequence of numbers

which approximates r.

This technique of successive approximations of real zeros is called Newton's method, or the Newton-Raphson
Method.
Example. Let us find an approximation to
Note that

to ten decimal places.

is an irrational number. Therefore the sequence of decimals which defines

is the only zero of f(x) = x2 - 5 on the interval [1,3]. See the Picture.

will not stop. Clearly

Let

be the successive approximations obtained through Newton's method. We have

Let us start this process by taking x1 = 2.

It is quite remarkable that the results stabilize for more than ten decimal places after only 5 iterations!
Example. Let us approximate the only solution to the equation

In fact, looking at the graphs we can see that this equation has one solution.

This solution is also the only zero of the function

used to approximate r. Since r is between 0 and

. So now we see how Newton's method may be

, we set x1 = 1. The rest of the sequence is generated through the

formula

We have

Exercise 1. Approximate the real root to two four decimal places of

Answer.
Exercise 2. Approximate to four decimal places

Answer.
Exercise 3. Show that Newton's Method applied to f(x)=x2-2 and x1=3/2 leads to exactly the same approximating
sequence for the square root of 2 as the Babylonian Method.

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