Bisection Method - Analysis

Analysis

The method is guaranteed to converge to a root of f if f is a continuous function on the interval and f(a) and f(b) have opposite signs. The absolute error is halved at each step so the method converges linearly, which is comparatively slow.

Specifically, if c1 = (a+b)/2 is the midpoint of the initial interval, and cn is the midpoint of the interval in the nth step, then the difference between cn and a solution c is bounded by

This formula can be used to determine in advance the number of iterations that the bisection method would need to converge to a root to within a certain tolerance.

Read more about this topic:  Bisection Method

Famous quotes containing the word analysis:

    Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.
    Joseph Featherstone (20th century)

    The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)