Babylonian Method for Square Root

var xn:Number = 1;
var xn1:Number = 0
var square:Number =39;

trace("find the sqrt of ", square);
trace("Math.sqrt: ", Math.sqrt(square))

// no starting approximation, just try up to 35 iterations
for(var i:int = 0; i<35; i++){
	xn1 = .5 * (xn  + square / xn);
	if (xn1== xn){
		trace("other sqrt: ", xn1);
		break;
	}
	xn = xn1;
}
/*outputs
find the sqrt of  39
Math.sqrt:  6.244997998398398
other sqrt:  6.244997998398398
*/

I was reading about calculating square roots – not for speed optimization purposes, just to see some of the different ways to go about it. The above snippet uses the Babylonian method to find the square root of a number. I left out the first step of guessing at the square root… so this snippet is by no means efficient…