How to take nth sqare root in Numbers?

Hi Chester,

to find the nth root of a number, raise it to the power of 1/n

Square root (SQRT) is number ^(1/2)

Cube root is number ^(1/3)

Formula in B2 (and Fill Down) =$A2^(1÷2)

Formula in C2 (and Fill Down) =$A2^(1÷3)

Regards,

Ian.

Hi Chester,

"This is in iOS 12."

Numbers for Mac (the topic in this community) won't run in iOS (any version), but the formula will be the same in th iOS version.

The square root of a number is a specific root—the one that when multiplied by itself results in the number of which it is the square root. There is no "nth square root".

But there is an "nth root", which I suspect is what you are looking for.

The nth root of a number is the same value as the inverse nth power of that number.

Here are two examples showing how to write the formula.

The formula in B2 uses the SQRT function: SQRT(A2)

Useful, but not scalable to calculate other roots (or powers) of the number.

For a scaleable formula, we can use the POWER function or the 'power' operator ( ^ ).

D2: POWER(A2,1/C2)

or

E2: A2^(1/C2)

The POWER function takes two arguments: the first is the number, the second is the power to which the number is to be 'raised'. Because the function calculates the value of each argument separately, it's not necessary to use 'do me first' brackets to enclose the division in the second argument ( 1/C2).

In the alternate formula, using the power operator, the calculation follows the usual order of operations: Brackets, powers, multiplication and division, addition and subtraction.

Without the brackets (parentheses), this formula would raise the number in A2 to its first power, then divide that result by the number in column C. For the values in the example, the result in E2 would be 6^1 (6) /2 = 3.

With the brackets, the result in E2 is: (1/6=0.1666666...) >> 2^0.1666666...= 2.449489... (as shown above).

Either formula will give the same results, as can be seen above.

Regards,

Barry