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 $f$ is a continuous function, $f(0)=-1<0$ and $f(1/7)=1/7^5>0$, the intermediate value theorem gives a root of a polynomial $\xi \in (0,1/7)$. Moreover $f^{\prime }(x)=5x^4+7>0$ for all real $x$, so $f$ is strictly increasing and this is its only real root of a polynomial.

For $x\in [0,1/7]$,so $g$ maps the closed interval into itself. AlsoThe mean value theorem therefore gives $|g(x)-g(y)|\le q|x-y|$ on the closed interval: $g$ is a contraction mapping. For any starting value $x_0\in [0,1/7]$, all iterates remain in that closed interval, and since $g(\xi )=\xi$,Thus the fixed-point iteration converges to the unique real root of a polynomial from every $x_0\in [0,1/7]$. This explicit error estimate proves the needed convergence directly.