With the help of the bisection method, let us try to find
by using the following equation
Bisection is a Binary search method which is based on the Intermediate Value Theorem.
Using bisection method to find
, we start by a closed interval
on which
changes sign, We divide the interval in half. We then replace
by the half-interval on which
changes sign. This process is repeated until the interval has a total length less than certain tolerance
.
If we started with an interval
of length
, where
and
. [note that
and
].
Find the number of steps required to find
when
?
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Every iteration halves the length of the interval. We want to find the number of iterations n such that 1 . 5 divided by 2 n times is less than 1 0 − 6 .
This is equivalent to finding the minimum value of n such that 2 n 1 . 5 ≤ 1 0 − 6 , or that 2 n ≥ 1 , 5 0 0 , 0 0 0 . Taking the logarithm of both sides to the base 2 gives us n ≥ 2 0 . 5 1 , and the smallest positive integer which satisfies this is n = 2 1 .