How do you order the following from least to greatest -11/5, -pi, -2.98, -sqrt7?

1 Answer
Feb 5, 2017

-pi, -2.98, -sqrt(7), -11/5

Explanation:

Given:

-11/5, -pi, -2.98, -sqrt(7)

Let's get a decimal approximation for sqrt(7) first:

Note that 2^2 = 4 < 7 < 9 = 3^2

So choose 5/2 as a first approximation.

Then applying one step of Newton's method, a better approximation is:

(5^2+7*2^2)/(2*5*2) = (25+28)/20 = 53/20 = 2.65

So we have:

{ (-11/5 = -2.2), (-pi ~~ -3.14), (-2.98 = -2.98), (-sqrt(7) ~~ -2.65) :}

So in ascending order:

-pi, -2.98, -sqrt(7), -11/5