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In mathematics, Descartes' rule of signs, described by René Descartes in his La Géométrie, counts the roots of a polynomial by examining sign changes in its coefficients. The number of positive real roots is at most the number of sign changes in the sequence of polynomial's coefficients (omitting zero coefficients), and the difference ...
Descartes' rule of signs asserts that the difference between the number of sign variations in the sequence of the coefficients of a polynomial and the number of its positive real roots is a nonnegative even integer. It results that if this number of sign variations is zero, then the polynomial does not have any positive real roots, and, if this ...
However, in the case of polynomials there are other methods such as Descartes' rule of signs, Budan's theorem and Sturm's theorem for bounding or determining the number of roots in an interval. They lead to efficient algorithms for real-root isolation of polynomials, which find all real roots with a guaranteed accuracy.
takes a negative value for some positive real value of x. In the remaining of the section, suppose that a 0 ≠ 0. If it is not the case, zero is a root, and the localization of the other roots may be studied by dividing the polynomial by a power of the indeterminate, getting a polynomial with a nonzero constant term.
The oldest complete algorithm for real-root isolation results from Sturm's theorem. However, it appears to be much less efficient than the methods based on Descartes' rule of signs and Vincent's theorem. These methods divide into two main classes, one using continued fractions and the other using bisection. Both method have been dramatically ...
Descartes's work provided the basis for the calculus developed by Leibniz and Newton, who applied the infinitesimal calculus to the tangent line problem, thus permitting the evolution of that branch of modern mathematics. [141] His rule of signs is also a commonly used method to determine the number of positive and negative roots of a polynomial.
If instead there is only one real root, then that is denoted as ; the complex conjugate roots are labeled and . Using Descartes' rule of signs, there can be at most one negative root; is negative if and only if <. As discussed below, the roots are useful in determining the types of possible orbits.
In the first column, there are two sign changes (0.75 → −3, and −3 → 3), thus there are two roots whose real part are non-negative and the system is unstable. The characteristic equation of an example servo system is given by: [ 6 ]