Tutorial Questions: Numerical Methods
1. Basic Concepts
(a) Define the following terms:
i. Numerical method
ii. Exact solution
iii. Non-exact (approximate) solution
(b) Give two reasons why numerical methods are needed.
(c) Consider the equation x2 − 3 = 0.
i. Write the exact solution.
ii. Give a non-exact solution correct to three decimal places.
iii. Verify that your approximate value is not exact.
2. Errors in Numerical Calculations
(a) The true value of a quantity is 5.6734 and its approximate value is 5.67.
i. Compute the error.
ii. Compute the absolute error.
iii. Compute the relative error.
iv. Compute the percentage error.
(b) The true value of π is 3.14159265. It is approximated as 3.142.
i. Find the absolute error.
ii. Find the relative error.
iii. Find the percentage error.
(c) State and explain briefly the following sources of errors and give one example for
each:
•Rounding error
•Truncation error
•Measurement error
•Error due to limited computer precision
•Error propagation
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(d) The value = 0.142857 . . . is rounded to four decimal places.
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i. Write the rounded value.
ii. Compute the rounding error.
3. Convergence and Stopping Criteria
(a) Consider the sequence:
x1 = 2, x2 = 1.5, x3 = 1.42, x4 = 1.414, x5 = 1.4142.
i. Is the sequence convergent or divergent?
ii. Explain your answer.
(b) Consider the sequence:
1, 3, 6, 10, 15, . . .
i. Does the sequence converge?
ii. Justify your answer.
(c) Suppose an iterative method produces:
x5 = 2.7181, x6 = 2.7184,
Let ε = 10−3 .
i. Check whether |xn+1 − xn | < ε is satisfied.
ii. Should the iteration stop?
(d) State three common stopping criteria used in iterative numerical methods.
(e) Given the interval [2, 5] and tolerance ε = 0.01, use
b−a
≤ε
2n
to compute the required number of iterations in the bisection method.
4. Bisection Method
(a) Use the bisection method to find a root of
f (x) = x3 − 4
in [1, 2] correct to two decimal places.
(b) Use the bisection method to find a root of
f (x) = x2 − 6
in [2, 3] with tolerance 0.01. Perform at least 4 iterations.
(c) For f (x) = x3 − x − 1:
i. Perform three iterations of the bisection method.
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ii. Estimate the error bound after three iterations.
5. Fixed Point Iteration
(a) Use fixed point iteration to solve
cos x + 2
x=
4
with x0 = 0.5 and tolerance 10−3 . Perform at least four iterations.
(b) State the condition for convergence of fixed point iteration.
6. Newton–Raphson Method
(a) Use Newton–Raphson method to find a root of
f (x) = x2 − 5
with x0 = 2. Stop when |xn+1 − xn | < 0.001.
(b) Use Newton–Raphson method to solve
f (x) = x3 − 2x − 5
with x0 = 2. Perform two iterations.
(c) Explain why Newton–Raphson method may fail if:
i. The initial guess is poor
ii. f ′ (xn ) = 0
(d) Use Newton–Raphson method to solve
f (x) = cos x − x
with x0 = 0.5. Perform two iterations.
7. Secant Method
(a) Use the secant method with x0 = 1, x1 = 2 to find a root of
f (x) = x3 − x − 1.
Perform two iterations.
(b) Compare with the Bisection method in 4(c) above. Which method converge
faster?
(c) Use the secant method to find a root of
f (x) = e−x − x
with initial approximations x0 = 0 and x1 = 1. Perform three iterations and
comment on the convergence.