[Math] mental math: approximating fractional exponents

educationexponentiationmental-arithmetic

Does anyone have any good tricks for estimating expressions with fractional exponents (besides guess and check)?

For example, I want to easily calculate $9.1^{1/3}$. Currently, the best I've got is trial and error, but besides that $2^3 = 8$ and $3^3 = 27$, it gets pretty ugly… Could I approximately interpolate between these two?

Best Answer

Using calculus, specifically Taylor approximation, centered at 8 (which is the closest value to 9.1 whose cube root we know), we get $$(8+x)^{1/3}=2+\frac{1}{12}x-\frac{1}{288}x^2+\frac{5}{20736}x^3\cdots$$ Hence, in your example, we have $x=1.1$, or $$(8+1.1)^{1/3}=2+\frac{1}{12}1.1-\frac{1}{288}1.1^2+\frac{5}{20736}1.1^3\cdots$$ You can compute as many terms as you need. One term givs you 2. Two terms gives you $2.091\overline{6}$. Three terms gives you $2.0874652\overline{7}$.