Two new direct minimum search procedures for functions of several variables

The method can somewhat vaguely be classified as a modified "steepest descent." It is, of course, an iterative procedure. Each cycle, to be iterated on, consists essentially of two parts: in Part I a "best" line is found, in Part II an attempt is made to minimize the given function along this line. Thus, each cycle resembles the corresponding cycle in the method of steepest descent. The method of steepest descent differs from our method in the...