4.II.13F

Analysis II
Part IB, 2006

State precisely the contraction mapping theorem.

An ancient way to approximate the square root of a positive number aa is to start with a guess x>0x>0 and then hope that the average of xx and a/xa / x gives a better guess. We can then repeat the procedure using the new guess. Justify this procedure as follows. First, show that all the guesses after the first one are greater than or equal to a\sqrt{a}. Then apply the properties of contraction mappings to the interval [a,)[\sqrt{a}, \infty) to show that the procedure always converges to a\sqrt{a}.

Once the above procedure is close enough to a\sqrt{a}, estimate how many more steps of the procedure are needed to get one more decimal digit of accuracy in computing a\sqrt{a}.