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#1 2008-12-01 12:50:39

tobi's a good boy
Member
Registered: 2008-08-14
Posts: 32

i forgot something

i forgot how to do square root

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#2 2008-12-01 13:26:45

mathsyperson
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Registered: 2005-06-22
Posts: 4,900

Re: i forgot something

Think of it as the opposite of squaring.

2 squared is 4, so the square root of 4 is 2.
etc.


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#3 2008-12-01 16:45:01

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 46,339

Re: i forgot something

Prime factorization is one of the easiest and best methods.

eg: Finding the square root of 324.
324=162x2 = 81 x 2 x 2 = 27 x 3 x 2 x 2 = 9 x 3 x 3 x 2 x 2 = 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 2 x 2
For every two same prime factors of the original number, take one of them for the square root.
Thus, √324 =3 x 3 x 2 = 18
Remember, the square root of a number x² is always ±x.


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#4 2008-12-02 01:11:01

mathsyperson
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Registered: 2005-06-22
Posts: 4,900

Re: i forgot something

That's something that not everyone agrees on.

The solutions of x² - k² = 0 are definitely x = ± k, but √(k²) is generally taken to be just k.


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#5 2009-01-20 10:07:18

lightning
Real Member
Registered: 2007-02-26
Posts: 2,060

Re: i forgot something

i don't know either so this is really helpful, so as an example -

the square root of 4 is 2?

because 2x2=4 and it all has to do with the table, am i right?


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#6 2009-01-20 10:13:55

luca-deltodesco
Member
Registered: 2006-05-05
Posts: 1,470

Re: i forgot something

mathsyperson wrote:

That's something that not everyone agrees on.

The solutions of x² - k² = 0 are definitely x = ± k, but √(k²) is generally taken to be just k.

Does the symbol √ not refer specificaly to the 'principal' square root, aka the positive root, wherein simply 'square root' gives no such specifics, aka (x[sup]2[/sup])[sup]0.5[/sup] = ±x = ±√(x[sup]2[/sup])


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