Certain improvements of Newton’s method with fourth-order convergence

In this paper we present two new schemes, one is third-order and the other is fourth-order. These are improvements of second-order methods for solving nonlinear equations and are based on the method of undetermined coefficients. We show that the fourth-order method is more efficient than the fifth-order method due to Kou et al. [J. Kou, Y. Li, X. Wang, Some modifications of Newton’s method with fifth-order covergence, J. Comput. Appl. Math., 209 (2007) 146–152]. Numerical examples are given to support that the methods thus obtained can compete with other iterative methods.