Question

For the bisection search, epsilon governs the divisions. On the video, John Guttag says that 12345 / epsilon^2(0.0001) is about 26.897. I get a totally different number. What am I not getting here?

Answer 1

Either your epsilon is different or your syntax is wrong. I suspect that your denominator format is incorrect.

Answer 2

Guttag is talking about the worst case for the bisection search which is log2(N). I was initially confused too, because he doesn't restate the log2(N) when talking about 12345/epsilon^2.

N = 12345/epsilon^2
log2(123450000) = 26.897