Wolfram Demonstrations Project

The top plot shows the usual geometric picture of Newton's method for finding an approximate solution to

. Starting with an initial guess,

, move down the tangent until you hit the

axis, then calculate a new tangent line and repeat

times. The bottom plot is a cobweb plot for

. This illustrates that Newton's method composes

with itself

times starting with

Contributed by: Bruce Atwood

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Two Geometric Views of Newton's Method