Thread: Newton method to find roots

when your program hangs or is acting weird, i would recommend to use printf statements to see whats being executed, what isnt, what the values of your variables are, etc.

if you print temp_root in your while loop you will see its value is always 0. thats because your not modifying temp_root after each iteration, so it wont change, so it will loop continuously. also, rather than doing many arithmetic operations in one statement, create other temp. variables then compose them together. check the value of each one separately to ensure your calculations are correct.

as i dont know the algorithm for this, i cant help. (have to study for my own data structures exam!)

Thanks for that nadroj , I tried changing it to :

Code:

temp_root=(1/2*(temp_root+(2/temp_root)));

, ( within while loop ) , but this makes my program crash . Is this undefined behaviour or am I doing something else wrong ? Thanks again

again you should print out what each variable is--maybe your trying to divide by zero? do not use one statement to do all of this. use at least 2 other statements on 2 other variables, and print each one to make sure everything is what it should be.

Code:

temp_root=(1 / 2.0 * ( temp_root + ( 2 / temp_root) ) );

ssharish

Since the technique works perfectly well for computing the square root of any positive number, not just an integer, number should be a floating-point type, not an int (and temp_root should be the same type).

Ok thanks guys , I changed it to a do while loop , and I aded a variable x to do 10 repetitions , to achieve accuracy . However it still crashes.

Code:

#include<stdio.h>
#include<math.h>

int main(void)

	{	
		float temp_root;
		float number;
		int x=0;
		printf("Please Enter the number whose sqrt is to be found\n");
		scanf("&#37;f",number);
		
			if (number<0) 
			{	
			printf("invalid number entered");
			return 0;
			}
			temp_root=number;		
			do
			{
			temp_root=(1 / 2.0 * ( temp_root + ( 2 / temp_root) ) );
			x=x+1;
			}
			while(x<10);
		printf("The square root of the number is %f",temp_root);
	}

Code:

scanf("%f",&number);

ssharish

Also, this code doesn't need <math.h>.

Thanks for that ssharish2005 now when I changed it it works BUT

0.082106 , I always get that as the result . No matter which number I enter . Any other ideas ?

Your iteration formula has a sign error. The general formula for Newton's method is

x_{n+1} = x_n - f(x_n)/f'(x_n)

and if you plug in the appropriate function f, you'll find it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_method

I dont understand that formula you posted , I need to find square root of a number not a root of a function

Originally Posted by ICool

I dont understand that formula you posted , I need to find square root of a number not a root of a function

You need to understand how Newton's method is being used to derive the (faulty) iteration formula that you're using in your code. Once you do that, you'll be able to find the sign error you made. First step: decide what function f should be set to to compute the square root of a number by this method.