Fixed-point iteration, also called Picard iteration, linear iteration, and repeated substitution, is easy to investigate in Maple for the scalar case.  The syntax for the vector case is a bit more complex, so we show how to define a vector-valued function of a vector argument.

Note: In this article, our implementation of the Maple calculations is command-based and uses Maple syntax for mathematical expressions.  It is worthing noting that standard math notation is also available, and many of these calculations could also have been implemented interactively, using Clickable Math tools such as palettes and context-sensitive menus.  

Starting from , fixed-point iteration for the scalar function  generates the sequence  by computing

Under the right conditions on , this sequence converges to a fixed point defined by the equation .  This process is easy to demonstrate in the scalar case.  For example, the quadratic equation

has the two solutions

Rearranging the equation to the form  by the steps

allows us to define the function  via

The solutions of the quadratic equation are fixed points of , as we see from

The sequence defined by  will converge to  if  is sufficiently close to 1 because , as shown by

To demonstrate that fixed-point iteration starting at  converges to , we work in floating-point arithmetic and write

Maple's ability to implement the scalar function  makes fixed-point calculations natural in the scalar case.

If the vector  satisfies the equation , where  is a vector-valued function of the vector argument x, then  is a fixed-point of .  As in the scalar case, fixed-point iteration can be used to find solutions to equations of the form , where  is itself a vector-valued function of the vector argument x.

For example, if x is the vector

and the function  is the vector

then Figure 1 shows that the equations determined by  have four real solutions.

Maple determines these four solutions to be

Using exact arithmetic, these solutions can be written as the vectors

or as the vectors

in floating-point arithmetic.

The first-quadrant solution can be found by fixed-point iteration if the equation  is cast into the form  by defining the vector  as follows.

That the first-quadrant solution is a fixed point of this  is demonstrated by the calculation

We next provide several Maple implementations of fixed-point iteration for the vector-valued function .  First, we use the vector  as an expression into which we must make substitutions of the form .  To obtain the substitution rules at each step of the iteration, we use the top-level Equate command.  This command takes two lists or vectors, and forms the equations determined by equating like components.  Thus, we equate the components of the vectors

 and  

and start the fixed-point iteration at , so that we have

an iteration that slowly converges to the first-quadrant fixed point.

Alternatively, in an attempt to make a function out of the vector , we write

The argument of this function is not a vector, and we did not create a vector-valued function of a vector argument.  The argument of this function is the sequence of coordinates .  To implement fixed-point iteration with this function, we need to convert the output vectors to a sequence of two coordinates.  We do this by converting the output vector to a list, then removing the brackets from the list by appending the brackets .  Thus, the iteration can be written as

A true vector-valued function of a vector argument, namely, , is most easily created with the following syntax.

Then, the requisite iteration can be implemented with