Square Root (Newton’s Method)
In numerical analysis, a branch of mathematics, there are several square root algorithms or methods of computing the principal square root of a non-negative real number. As, generally, the roots of a function cannot be computed exactly. The root-finding algorithms provide approximations to roots expressed as floating point numbers.
Finding is the same as solving the equation for a positive x
. Therefore, any general numerical root-finding algorithm can be used.
Newton’s method (also known as the Newton–Raphson method), named after Isaac Newton and Joseph Raphson, is one example of a root-finding algorithm. It is a method for finding successively better approximations to the roots of a real-valued function.
Let’s start by explaining the general idea of Newton’s method and then apply it to our particular case with finding a square root of the number.
Newton’s Method General Idea
The Newton–Raphson method in one variable is implemented as follows:
The method starts with a function f
defined over the real numbers x
, the function’s derivative f'
, and an initial guess x0
for a root of the function f
. If the function satisfies the assumptions made in the derivation of the formula and the initial guess is close, then a better approximation x1
is:
Geometrically, (x1, 0)
is the intersection of the x
-axis and the tangent of the graph of f
at (x0, f (x0))
.
The process is repeated as:
until a sufficiently accurate value is reached.
Newton’s Method of Finding a Square Root
As it was mentioned above, finding is the same as solving the equation for a positive x
.
The derivative of the function f(x)
in case of square root problem is 2x
.
After applying the Newton’s formula (see above) we get the following equation for our algorithm iterations:
x := x - (x² - S) / (2x)
The x² − S
above is how far away x²
is from where it needs to be, and the division by 2x
is the derivative of x²
, to scale how much we adjust x
by how quickly x²
is changing.