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.

0
-1 0 1
-4

-8

(b) First iteration:

0 1
xr   0.5
2

1 0
a   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 xl xu xr f(xl) f(xr) f(xl)f(xr) a

1 0 1 0.5 -2 0.375 -0.75
2 0 0.5 0.25 -2 -0.73438 1.46875 100.00%
3 0.25 0.5 0.375 -0.73438 -0.18945 0.13913 33.33%
4 0.375 0.5 0.4375 -0.18945 0.08667 -0.01642 14.29%
5 0.375 0.4375 0.40625 -0.18945 -0.05246 0.009939 7.69%
Chapter 5, Problem 8.

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

7(4  5)
xr  5   4.22222
27

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

7(4.22222  5)
xr  4.22222   4.24096
 0.17284  7

4.24096  4.22222
a  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.