Some variants of Hansen-Patrick method with third and fourth order convergence

Based on Hansen-Patrick method [E. Hansen, M. Patrick, A family of root finding methods, Numer. Math. 27 (1977) 257-269], we derive a two-parameter family of methods for solving nonlinear equations. All the methods of the family have third-order convergence, except one which has the fourth-order convergence. In terms of computational cost, all these methods require evaluations of one function, one first derivative and one second derivative per iteration. Numerical examples are given to support that the methods thus obtained are competitive with other robust methods of similar kind. Moreover, it is shown by way of illustration that the present methods, particularly fourth-order method, are very effective in high precision computations.