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Message: [QUOTE="David Masover, post: 4653180"] Newton's Method, according to at least one Calculus textbook, is a way of finding roots (zeros) for any function for which you can calculate function values and derivatives. The example given is taking the cube root of seven, by rewriting the problem as: x^3 - 7 = 0 The derivative of which is easy to calculate as 3x^2. I wrote a program to do Newton's Method. It's one of the few times I wished I was using Lisp instead of Ruby, as I had no easy way of taking apart a block as source code to find its derivative. Instead, whenever I apply it, I have to take the derivative manually, or feed it through Maxima. But I guess if what you wanted was something that knows how to do algebraic manipulation, without losing accuracy until you tell it to give you a float, there's always Maxima. [/QUOTE]