Talk:Roots of a function

I think that traditionally root finding algorithms have a very small difference value defined (called "epsilon" when I learned it) where if abs(f(x)) < this difference, then x is considered "close enough to a root." This is usually related to some sort of named root finding algorithm like bisection, regula falsi, or Newton's method (he has too many methods). Maybe this task could be edited (or other tasks made) to include those methods (I can give C code or at least pseudocode for some). --Mwn3d 18:59, 21 February 2008 (MST)

Feel free to change it. :-) --Short Circuit 21:30, 21 February 2008 (MST)

It would also be interesting to include a symbolic math package which would use algebra to find the exact roots. --IanOsgood 09:52, 22 February 2008 (MST)

Your wish is my comand ;-) (I had wanted to include Maple for a while now, just never got around to it...) Sgeier 13:43, 12 March 2008 (MDT)

In your Maple example, is there any indication of exact-vs-approximation? (That part of the task description seems somewhat bothersome.) --TBH 16:54, 12 March 2008 (MDT)

hope that claarifies it...Sgeier 14:25, 13 March 2008 (MDT)

Python example

In the Python example, I think it would be better to check if the value of f(x) were within a range including zero (an error bound of sorts) rather than exactly equal to zero. Sometimes computers aren't too good with getting things that exact. --Mwn3d 23:06, 9 June 2008 (MDT)