Square Root In Scheme

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        This implements a square root function in Scheme using Newton's approximation algorithm.

Basically, if you want the square root of y and your best guess is x, a better guess is the average of x and y/x.

So, if you want the square root of 10 and your best guess is 3,
x=3     y=10  x<-(3 + 10/3)/2
x=3.166 y=10  x<-(3.166 + 10/3.133)/2
x=3.162
...

(define (sqrt-iter guess x)
    (if (good-enough? guess x)
        guess
        (sqrt-iter (improve guess x)
                    x)))

(define (improve guess x)
    (average guess (/ x guess)))

(define (average x y)
    (/ (+ x y) 2))

(define (good-enough? guess x)
    (< (abs (- (square guess) x))
        0.001))

(define (sqrt x)
    (sqrt-iter 1.0 x))

(sqrt 10)

Tags:
• newton
• Scheme
• sqrt
• square root