Approximating cube roots to high precision.

approximationcalculusradicals

I learned that to approximate $\sqrt{n}$ to one digit of precision (where $n$ is a real number), we find the closest square to $n$ ($s^2$), take the square root of that, and add the following $$\frac{n-s^2}{2s}\tag{1}$$ where the two in the denominator of $(1)$ comes from the two in the denominator of the power ($\sqrt{n}=n^{1/2}$).

I thought that to approximate cube roots, we replace that two with a three and we choose the closest cube instead. However, I don’t get great approximations when doing that. For example, using this method we get that the cube root of 200 is about 6.1, which isn’t the desired $5.8$.

So how can we approximate cube roots for at least one decimal digit without technical assistance?

Edit: By "technical assistance" I originally meant computers, calculators, or any machinery that computes expressions quickly. But this now includes things like no big coefficients, radicals, or anything too complicated. The purpose of this question was to be able to compute cube roots mentally.

Best Answer

I think your formula for square roots should be

$$\frac{n+s^2}{2s}.$$

This is an implementation of Newton's Method (which is easy to look up.) The equivalent for cube roots is

$$\frac{n+2s^3}{3s^2}$$

If you take $n=6$, it gives $5.851851853...$

Note that you can always take the output and put it back into the formula and get an even better approximation for $s$. You can do this as often as you like.

EDIT: OK, I see that your formula gives you a number to add to your guess. My formula has the guess already figured in. To get the square root of $10$, I guess $s=3$ to get $(10+3^2)/6 = 3.16667.$ To get a better approximation, put in $3.16667$ to get

$$\frac{10+3.16667^2}{2*3.16667} = 3.162280707.$$