Applications of Derivatives 3

At the end of this session, students will be able to understand and use linear
approximations, differentials, and Newton’s method for approximating the
roots of a function.

Linear Approximations, Differentials and Newton’s Method

In this topic, we will look at Newton’s method for approximating the roots of
a function. Isaac Newton shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz as the
developer of calculus

Linear Approximations
In this section we’re going to take a look at an application not of derivatives
but of the tangent line to a function. To get the tangent line we do need to
take derivatives, so in some way this is an application of derivatives as we ll.
For any function f (x), the tangent is a close approximation of the function for
some small distance from the tangent point.

L(x)

Figure 1. Graph of the linearization of the function.

From this graph we can see that near the tangent line and the function
have nearly the same graph. On occasion we will use the tangent line, ,
as an approximation to the function, , near . In these cases we call
the tangent line the linear approximation to the function at .

Let’s take a look at an example.

Start with the point/slope equation

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The linearization is the equation of the tangent line, and you can use the old
formulas if you like.

Here’s another example:

Example 1: Determine the linear approximation for at . Use

the linear approximation to approximate the value of and .
Solution:
Since this is just the tangent line there really isn’t a whole lot to finding the
linear approximation.

The linear approximation is then,

Now, the approximations are nothing more than plugging the given values
of x into the linear approximation. For comparison purposes we’ll also
compute the exact values.
 So, at this linear approximation does a very good job of
approximating the actual value. However, at it doesn’t do such a good
job.
Near both the function and the linear approximation have nearly the
same slope and since they both pass through the point they should have
nearly the same value as long as we stay close to . However, as we move
away from the linear approximation is a line and so will always have the
same slope while the function's slope will change as x changes and so the
function will, in all likelihood, move away from the linear approximation.
Here’s a quick sketch of the function and its linear approximation at .

As noted above, the farther from we get the more distance separates the
function itself and its linear approximation.

Linear approximations do a very good job of approximating values of

as long as we stay “near” . However, the farther away from we get
the worse the approximation is liable to be. The main problem here is that
how near we need to stay to in order to get a good approximation will
depend upon both the function we’re using and the value of that we’re
using. Also, there will often be no easy way of predicting how far away
from we can get and still have a “good” approximation.

Let’s take a look at another example

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Example 2 Determine the linear approximation for at .

Solution
Again, there really isn’t a whole lot to this example. All that we need to do is
compute the tangent line to at .

The linear approximation is,

So, as long as stays small we can say that .

Differentials
When we first started to talk about derivatives, we said that

Example: Consider a circle of radius 10. If the radius increases by 0.1,

approximately how much will the area change?
 Let’s compute a couple of differentials.

Example 1 Compute the differential for each of the following.

a)
b)
c)

Solution
Here, we defined two differentials earlier and here we’re being asked to
compute a differential.
So, which differential are we being asked to compute? In this kind of
problem we’re being asked to compute the differential of the function. In
other words, dy for the first problem, dw for the second problem and df for
the third problem.

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Here are the solutions. Not much to do here other than take a derivative and
don’t forget to add on the second differential to the derivative.

a)

b)

c)

Newton’s Method
This application is an important application that is used in many areas.
This is an application that we can all understand and we can all understand
needs to be done on occasion even if we don’t understand the
physics/science behind an actual application.
In this section we are going to look at a method for approximating solutions
to equations. We all know that equations need to be solved on occasion and
in fact we’ve solved quite a few equations ourselves to this point. In all the
examples we’ve looked at to this point we were able to actually find the
solutions, but it’s not always possible to do that exactly and/or do the work
by hand. That is where this application comes into play. So, let’s see what
this application is all about.

Let’s suppose that we want to approximate the solution to and let’s

also suppose that we have somehow found an initial approximation to this
solution say, x0. This initial approximation is probably not all that good and
so we’d like to find a better approximation. This is easy enough to do. First
we will get the tangent line to at x0.

Now, take a look at the graph below.

 The blue line is the tangent line at x0. We can see that this line will cross
the x-axis much closer to the actual solution to the equation than x0
does. Let’s call this point where the tangent at x0 crosses the x-axis x1 and
we’ll use this point as our new approximation to the solution.

So, how do we find this point? Well we know it’s coordinates, , and we
know that it’s on the tangent line so plug this point into the tangent line and
solve for x1 as follows,

So, we can find the new approximation provided the derivative isn’t zero at
the original approximation.
Now we repeat the whole process to find an even better approximation. We
form up the tangent line to at x1 and use its root, which we’ll call x2, as a
new approximation to the actual solution. If we do this we will arrive at the
following formula.

This point is also shown on the graph above and we can see from this graph
that if we continue following this process will get a sequence of numbers that
are getting very close the actual solution. This process is called Newton’s
Method.
Here is the general Newton’s Method
Newton’s Method

If xn is an approximation a solution of and if the

next approximation is given by,

Now, when do we stop? How many times do we go through this

process? One of the more common stopping points in the process is to

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continue until two successive approximations agree to a given number of
decimal places.
There are two issues that we need to resolve.

First, we really do need to be solving in order for Newton’s Method

to be applied. This isn’t really all that much of an issue but we do need to
make sure that the equation is in this form prior to using the method.

Secondly, we do need to somehow get our hands on an initial approximation

to the solution (i.e. we need somehow). One of the more common ways of
getting our hands on is to sketch the graph of the function and use that to
get an estimate of the solution which we then use as . Another common
method is if we know that there is a solution to a function in an interval then
we can use the midpoint of the interval as .

Let’s work an example of Newton’s Method.

Example 1 : Use Newton’s Method to determine an approximation to the

solution to that lies in the interval [0,2]. Find the approximation to
six decimal places.
Solution
First note that there were no given initial guess. However, the interval is
given in which to look. We will use this to get our initial guess. As noted
above the general rule of thumb in these cases is to take the initial
approximation to be the midpoint of the interval. So, we’ll use as our
initial guess.

Next, recall that we must have the function in the form . Therefore,
we first rewrite the equation as,

Now, write down the general formula for Newton’s Method. (Doing this will
often simplify up the work a little so it’s generally not a bad idea to do this.)

Let’s now get the first approximation.

 At this point we should point out that the phrase “six decimal places” does
not mean just get x1 to six decimal places and then stop. Instead it means
that we continue until two successive approximations agree to six decimal
places.
Given that stopping condition we clearly need to go at least one step farther.

We’ve got the approximation to 1 decimal place. Let’s do another one,

leaving the details of the computation to you.

We’ve got it to three decimal places. We’ll need another one.

And now we’ve got two approximations that agree to 9 decimal places and so
we can stop. We will assume that the solution is
approximately .

Another example is given below.

1
Finding a root for: 𝑓(𝑥 ) = 2 𝑥 2 − 3.

1
Course Module Figure 2. Graph of 𝑓 (𝑥) = 2
𝑥 2 − 3.
 This is a recursive algorithm because a set of steps are repeated with the
previous answer put in the next repetition. Each repetition is called an
iteration.

Guess:

This is Newton’s Method of finding roots. It is an example of an algorithm (a

specific set of computational steps.)

This technique is sometimes called the Newton-Raphson method. Isaac

Newton developed a similar formula in 1671, but it was not published until
1736 and is not as easy to use as Raphson’s method. Very little is known
about Joseph Raphson, who lived approximately 1648-1715. He was
acquainted with Newton, so he may have gotten the idea from Newton.
Anyway, Newton tends to get the credit.
Consider this example.

There are some limitations to Newton’s method:

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Activities and Exercises

Work on exercises and complete the quiz. Refer to Week012-Assessments-

ApplicationsOfDerivatives3 file.

References
Angenent, Sigurd B. (2006). MATH 221 - 1st Semester Calculus Lecture
Notes, Version 2.0. Free Software Foundation
Strang, Gilbert. Calculus. Massachusetts: Wellesley, Wellesley-Cambridge
Press.
Finney, J. Demana, F. Wait, B. and Kennedy, D. (2005). Calculus. Prentice Hall.
Pearson Education, Inc.
Kelly, Greg. (2011). Greg Kelly Math. Hanford High School, 450 Hanford St.,
Richland, WA 99354. Retrieved from
https://sites.google.com/site/gkellymath/home/calculus-
powerpoints
Dawkins, Paul. (2007). Calculus I – Review. Retrieved from
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcI/CalcI.aspx