Trisha Sen.

X4 X2

X3 X1

X0 X5

Plot of f(x) = 2x 4 + sin(2x)

It is observed that the given function is highly non-linear. This results in oscillations of the x values,
found at each iteration of the Newton-Raphson method. There is a tendency of moving further and
further away from the solution before it can possibly converge. It can be seen in the plot that after 5
iterations we are actually further away from the root than the initial guess.
The results obtained using sen_prob2Homotopy(10):

Root = 2

Iterations = 86

The results obtained using nrOneDim (initial guess = 10):

Root = 2

Iterations = 2446

As was expected, the highly non-linear function takes an extremely large number of iterations to
converge, which points to the fact that NR is not the best way to solve similar probems.
On the other hand the modified method Homotopy that also makes use of the NR but with
modifications, results in almost 96% reduction in the number of iterations required to converge to the
correct root. Since this method begins with an almost linear problem, whose root is used to solve the
next more difficult problem, the initial guesses in NR is highly controlled, to be in the region where
convergence is guaranteed in a few steps. This approach is continued iteratively till we reach the
level of non-linearity desired by the problem.
In this example the root for k=1.9 (which is the last problem solved before actually solving g(x)), the
root is 2.0788. The NR method quickly converges to the correct root in ~3 iterations, when this value
is used as the initial guess.