Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
The notion of the order of convergence of iterative processes may well have been known to Gauss or even Newton, but to the author's knowledge it was first considered in detail in 1870 by Schröder(5). The subject was later investigated independently by Hartree(4) and Bodewig(1). Hartree alone mentions, briefly, the extension from one to several variables, but gives no detailed analysis. Domb and Fisher(2) consider a particular type of iterative process in several variables, which they call ‘degenerate’, in which all the variables tend to the same value. We shall follow essentially Hartree's treatment, in considering the solution of r simultaneous equations in r variables and applications to a generalization of the Newton-Raphson process.