Chapter 5, Problem 2.

Determine the real root of f x 5 x 3 5 x 2 6 x 2 :

(a) Graphically.
(b) Using bisection to locate the root. Employ initial guesses of xi 0 and xu 1 and iterate
until the estimated error a falls below a level of s 10% .
Answer:
(a) A plot indicates that a single real root occurs at about x = 0.42.
8
4
0
-1

-4

-8

(b) First iteration:

xr

0 1
0.5
2

1 0
100% 100%
1 0

f (0) f (0.5) 2(0.375) 0.75

Therefore, the new bracket is xl = 0 and xu = 0.5.

The process can be repeated until the approximate error falls below 10%. As summarized
below, this occurs after 5 iterations yielding a root estimate of 0.40625.
iteration
1
2
3
4
5

xl

xu

xr

f(xl)

0
0
0.25
0.375
0.375

1
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.4375

0.5
0.25
0.375
0.4375
0.40625

-2
-2
-0.73438
-0.18945
-0.18945

f(xr)
0.375
-0.73438
-0.18945
0.08667
-0.05246

f(xl)f(xr)
-0.75
1.46875
0.13913
-0.01642
0.009939

a
100.00%
33.33%
14.29%
7.69%

Chapter5,Problem8.
Find the positive square root of 18 using the false-position method to within s 0.5% . Employ
initial guesses of xl 4 and xu 5 .
Answer:
The square root of 18 can be set up as a roots problem by determining the positive root of the
function
f ( x ) x 2 18 0

Using false position, the first iteration is

xr 5

7(4 5)
4.22222
27

f ( 4) f ( 4.22222) 2( 0.17284) 0.34568

Therefore, the root is in the second interval and the lower guess is redefined as xl = 4.22222.
The second iteration is

xr 4.22222
a

7(4.22222 5)
4.24096
0.17284 7

4.24096 4.22222
100% 0.442%
4.24096

Thus, the computation can be stopped after just two iterations because 0.442% < 0.5%. Note
that the true value is 4.2426. The technique converges so quickly because the function is very
close to being a straight line in the interval between the guesses as in the plot of the function
shown below.