Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/prelims/mathematics-iv-resit/7/c/solution

Rearrange the polynomial equation as a fixed point equation:
First establish existence and uniqueness of the target root of a polynomial. Since is a continuous function, and , the intermediate value theorem gives a root of a polynomial . Moreover for all real , so is strictly increasing and this is its only real root of a polynomial.
For ,
so maps the closed interval into itself. Also
The mean value theorem therefore gives on the closed interval: is a contraction mapping. For any starting value , all iterates remain in that closed interval, and since ,
Thus the fixed-point iteration converges to the unique real root of a polynomial from every . This explicit error estimate proves the needed convergence directly.

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