The course of lectures on numerical methods (part I) given by the author to students in the numerical third of the course of the mathematics­ mechanics department of Leningrad State University is set down in this volume. Only the topics which, in the opinion of the author, are of the greatest value for numerical methods are considered in this book. This permits making the book comparatively small in size, and, the author hopes, accessible to a sufficiently wide circle of readers. The book may be used not only by students in daily classes, but also by students taking correspondence courses and persons connected with practical computa­ tion who desire to improve their theoretical background. The author is deeply grateful to V. I. Krylov, the organizer ofthe course on numerical methods (part I) at Leningrad State University, for his considerable assistance and constant interest in the work on this book, and also for his attentive review of the manuscript. The author is very grateful to G. P. Akilov and I. K. Daugavet for a series of valuable suggestions and observations. The Author Chapter I NUMERICAL SOLUTION OF EQUATIONS In this chapter, methods for the numerical solution of equations of the form P(x) = 0, will be considered, where P(x) is in general a complex-valued function.