GCSE Iteration

Dr J Frost (jfrost@tiffin.kingston.sch.uk)
www.drfrostmaths.com
@DrFrostMaths

Last modified: 20th June 2017

Term to term formulae

A sequence is generated using the

𝑥1= 3 , 𝑥 𝑛 +1= 𝑥𝑛 + 2 following term-to-term formula.
is the first term.

What would be the first 4 terms of the sequence? ?

?
?
?

How therefore do we interpret ?

“Each term is the previous term plus 2”

?
Test Your Understanding
1
Why do you think the
sequence refers to the first
term as rather than ?
Because indicates the
?
number of slugs ‘after 0
days’, i.e. the initial value.

?
119

2 A sequence is defined as:

Determine .

?
Iteration

Solve using:
a) The quadratic formula
(hint: square both sides first and make one side 0)
b) Iteration
We turn the equation into a term-to-
term formula, by making the left-

𝑥𝑛+1=√ 𝑥𝑛 + 1
hand-side and any instance of on

2
𝑥 =𝑥+1
the RHS . Don’t worry yet about why
it works…

𝑥0 =1
?
? You will always be given a starting
value in the exam. The 0 means
we’ve done “0 iterations”.
?? ?
Use your term-to-term formula to get successively
?a better solutions to the original equation.

𝑥1=√ 𝑥0+1=1.41421…
Use the ANS key to
reuse the previous
Bro Note: We only want the positive
answer.
solution because in the original equation, If you type in , then
the RHS is positive (square rooting can’t give type , you can then
a negative value) and thus the LHS, i.e. spam the equals key!
must be positive.
We could keep going for ever to keep getting more accurate solutions. The
exam will usually tell you how many iterations it wants (here we did 4).
Why use iteration then?
In the previous example, we could have found out the ‘exact’ answer using
the quadratic formula.

However, for some functions, the exact solution is either complicated and
difficult to calculate:

𝒙 𝟑 +𝟐 𝒙 𝟐 −𝟑 𝒙 +𝟒=𝟎 ?

or there’s no ‘exact’ expression at all! (involving roots, sin, cos, etc.)

𝒙 − 𝐜𝐨𝐬 ( 𝒙 ) =𝟎 ?
Exact solution not expressible 

Iteration therefore is an intelligent way of doing ‘trial and improvement’ that gets
us the solution correct to progressively more and more decimal places on each
iteration, even if there is no way to write the answer in a 100% accurate way.
Another Example
Bro-Exam Note: Most exam questions have two
parts: the first will get you to rearrange the equation
so you have on its own on the LHS
[Edexcel New SAMs Paper 3H Q14c]

a) Show that the equation can be arranged to give

𝟑
𝟒 𝒙=𝟏−𝒙
Bro Tip: Use the target expression as clues

? for how to rearrange. Each term is over 4,

which suggests we need to divide by 4 at
some point.

b) Starting with , use the iteration formula twice, to find an estimate for the
solution of .
Write all the digits on your calculator display.

𝒙 𝟎 =𝟎
For iterative methods, give your answer
as a decimal NOT as a fraction. Why?
Because fractions imply an exact answer,

? ?
but this method only gets an
approximation of the solution)
Test Your Understanding
a) Show that the equation can be arranged to give

3
𝑥 =𝑥+19
?

b) Starting with , use the iteration formula four times to find an

approximate solution to
Write all the digits on your calculator display.

𝑥0 =0 ?
Roots and Showing Roots Lie in a Range
Terminology: The roots are the solutions of an
−𝑥
2 − 𝑥=0 equation in the form .
If then the roots are the -intercepts of the
graph.

a Show that the equation has a root between 0 and 1.

The key is to show that substituting into the
left gives for one of them and for the
? other (make sure you write “” and “”.
Therefore it must pass 0 somewhere in
So must be equal to 0 for between.

b Rearrange to the form to set up an iterative formula.

c Choose a starting value (from step (a)) and generate the sequence.
We could have chosen any starting value between 0 and 1.
Preferably near the middle!

,,,,
?
Exercise
1 For each iterative formula, find and correct to 3 a) Show that can be written in the
three decimal places form .
(a)
?
b) Use the iteration formula
(b)
? to find to 3 decimal places. Start
with

(c) ?
?
(d)
?
c) Show that has a root between 2.6
4 and 2.7
?
2 For the equation , we can use the iterative formula Therefore ?
and .
d) Using and , find to 3 decimal
Explain the relationship between the values of and
the equation
places.
, , are successfully closer approximations to a ,
root/solution of ? ?

Why does this method work?
Recall we used the recurrence
This gives This is then fed
back into for the next
iteration, i.e. the value
becomes the new value!
This is equivalent to
moving to the line .
Note: You are not expected to know
this for your GCSE exams.
Solve This is known as a
staircase diagram
(given the shape!)
𝒙
= + 𝟏
𝒚 𝒚= √ 𝒙
Finding the solution to is
This value of is the same as sketching
the solution to and and seeing the point
at which they intersect.
𝒙𝟏
𝒙∗
𝒙𝟎
When , we would find .
We can repeat this process This is the value on the
using to get . graph.
There are questions on iteration available on the DFM Homework Platform.
www.drfrostmaths.com/homework