The Babylonian method for finding square roots involves dividing and averaging, over and over, to obtain a more accurate solution with each repeat of the process.
Inorder to find the square root of a number you need to follow the following steps.
Inorder to find the square root of a number you need to follow the following steps.
- Make an initial guess for the square root
- Divide the original number by this guess
- Find out the mean of the 2 numbers
- check if the difference between guess and quotient is less than the error if not then repeat the process again.
- use this mean value as your next guess
Let us take an example of finding out the square root of 7 to 3 decimal places
let n = 7 and error = 0.001
let us take an initial guess = 3
FIRST ITERATION
Step 1: Guess = 3
Step 2: Divide 7 by 3 = 2.3333333
Step 3: Find average of 3 and 2.333333 = 2.666666 (because (2+2.333333)/2 = 2.666666)
Step 4: difference (3 - 2.3333333) > error hence repeat the process again
Step 5: Next guess is 2.666666
SECOND ITERATION
Step 1: Guess 2.666666
Step 2: Divide 7 by 2.666666 = 2.624999
Step 3: Find average of 2.666666 and 2.624999 = 2.645832
Step 4: difference (2.666666 - 2.624999) > error hence repeat the process again
Step 5: Next guess is 2.645832
THIRD ITERATION
Step 1: Guess 2.645832
Step 2: Divide 7 by 2.645832 = 2.645670
Step 3: Find average of 2.645832 and 2.645670 = 2.645751
Step 4: difference (2.645832 - 2.645670) < error hence stop and print the answer
Step 4: FINAL guess is 2.645751
Now CHECK your final guess with a calculator: sqrt 7 = 2.645751
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