Use Newton's Method to solve 2sinx = 2 - x 2sinx=2x?

1 Answer
Feb 8, 2018

x = 0.704577 x=0.704577

Explanation:

We want to solve:

2sinx = 2 - x 2sinx=2x

Let:

f(x) = 2sinx + x -2 f(x)=2sinx+x2

It is important to understand that we cannot use Newton's Method to determine the existence of a root, or establish the number of roots of f(x)=0f(x)=0 in any particular interval. A graphical approach is recommended initially to establish this:

graph{2sinx + x -2 [-10, 10, -10, 10]}

From which we can be confident that there is a single root, alphaα where 0 lt alpha lt 20<α<2. Our aim is to solve f(x)=0f(x)=0. To find the solution numerically, using Newton-Rhapson method we use the following iterative sequence

{ (x_1,=x_0,), ( x_(n+1), = x_n - f(x_n)/(f'(x_n)),n gt 1 ) :}

Therefore we need the derivative:

\ \ \ \ \ \ f(x) = 2sinx+x-2
:. f'(x) = 2cosx+1

So our iterative formula is:

{ (x_1,=x_0,), ( x_(n+1), = x_n - (2sinx+x-2)/(2cosx+1), x gt 1 ) :}

Then using excel working to 8dp with x_0=1, we can tabulate the iterations as follows:

Steve M using Microsoft ExcelSteve M using Microsoft Excel

We get convergence to 6 \ dp with 6 iterations.

We could equally use a modern scientific graphing calculator as most new calculators have an "Ans" button that allows the last calculated result to be used as the input of an iterated expression.

And we conclude that the solution is (to 6dp):

x = 0.704577