Friday, May 14, 2021

Square root rule of thumb

This is from Techmath and can be incorporated in your repertoire of quick arithmetical rules.

Take 87 as a starter.  To be able to use this method, you need to know basic squares and roots and you're looking for the nearest whole number square below 87 in this case.

Which is 9 x 9 = 81.

Now, what's the difference between 81 and 87?  

It's 6, yes?  Double the 9 and put it below the vinculum so 6 over 18 = 1 over 3 = 0.33 recurring.  All up then, the square root is roughly 9.333 etc.

How much is it exactly, by calculator?  9.327  .  Ball park.  Not far away.

Let's do one more.  Square root of 43.  Nearest is 6 squared.  Difference is 7.  

So, 7 over 12 is our fraction.  Ballpark answer is 6 point just over 5, maybe point 55 or 56.  

And by calculator = 6.557.  Try a few of your own.

2 comments:

  1. Here's another quick one:

    Any number (N) ending in one half (n+0.5) may be squared easily:

    First 'remove' the half, leaving the integer (n), then
    N squared = n times (n+1) + 1/4

    Examples

    3.5 squared = 3 x 4 + 0.25 = 12.25
    6.5 squared = 6 x 7 + 0.25 = 42.25
    11.5 squared = 11 x 12 + 0.25 = 132.25

    ReplyDelete
  2. My method for sqrt(43). It must be about half way between 6 and 7. Ans 6.5

    ReplyDelete

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