THE SECANT METHOD - University of Iowa
homepage.math.uiowa.edu/~whan/3800.d/S3-3.pdfIt is clear from the numerical results that the secant method requires more iterates than the Newton method (e.g., with Newton’s method, the iterate x 6 is accurate to the machine precision of around 16 decimal digits). But note that the secant method does not require a knowledge of f0(x), whereas Newton’s method requires both f(x) and f0(x).