10: Solving Quadratics and Rootfinding

This page is a draft and is under active development.


• 10.1: Absolute and Relative Errors
The definition of absolute, relative and percent errors are presented.  Examples are given as well.
• 10.2: Rounding Errors and the Quadratic Formula
The quadratic formula is a well-known way to solve quadratic equations.  In this section, we show that there are certain equations that are difficult to solve when using floating-point numbers.
• 10.3: Re-examining the Quadratic Formula
As we saw in the previous section, the quadratic formula can produce serious errors in certain circumstances.  In this section, we rewrite the quadratic formula to help minimize this problem.
• 10.4: Newton’s Method
Newton's method is a well-known and fast method to finding roots of any function which is differentiable.  We develop the method here and give examples of it's use.

This page titled 10: Solving Quadratics and Rootfinding is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Peter Staab.