How to calculate the square root in Excel?

The program Microsoft Excel has a wide range of mathematical functions that allow solving complex problems. A number of the simplest actions - addition, multiplication and others - to perform very easily, using special symbols. However, there are also those that require special description - so, not everyone knows how to calculate the square root in Excel.

What is the square root ?

Before you begin the study of the process, how to find the square root in Excel, it is worth getting acquainted with what this mathematical function represents. By definition, the square root of a is a number whose square is equal to the number a. In mathematical sciences you can find not only square roots. They also come in any other degree, so the square root is often called the second root.

Root function

When solving the problem of finding the square root in Excel, you can get the desired result in several ways. The functional of the program allows you to use the built-in algorithms of solutions, and write it yourself, using special theorems and properties of the root. The simplest way to find the answer is the square root function. In Excel, you can call it by opening the function menu or by writing it manually.

The syntax of the function is very simple - after specifying the use of one of the functions (equal sign), it is necessary to write the keyword "ROOT", which indicates the call of the corresponding command. Next, the variable will remain in parentheses, from which it is required to extract the square root. In Excel, both an explicit numeric value and a cell reference can be used as a function argument, as well as some mathematical expression, the result of which is a number.

Using mathematical properties

The square root in Excel can be calculated and a number of other methods that do not require deep knowledge in the mathematical sciences. To do this, it is enough to know what the root is, - this topic was touched on in the first section of the article. Using the definition of a square root, it can be represented in the form of an inverse power of the two of the required number. Thus, you can get the square root without using the function "ROOT" by simply raising the number to the power.

You can also do this in two ways. The first is to use another function - "DEGREE". It raises the specified number or the result of the mathematical expression to the selected degree. In this case, it is necessary to indicate the number 1/2 or 0.5 in the "Degree" column. Any number can be raised to a certain degree without using any functions - there is a special symbol in Excel that is responsible for this operation: "^". In this case, to get the square root, it is enough to put the expression in brackets, after which add "^ (1/2)" or "^ (0,5)". The result of this action will be similar to exponentiation using a function, as well as using the "ROOT" function.

It should be noted that the method of finding a root with raising to a power is more convenient. The reason for this is the fact that with the help of these operations it is possible to obtain a root of any degree without using any special additional computations.

Examples

To finally figure out how to calculate the square root in Excel, it's worth considering a couple of examples for the two methods described above.

In the first case, we use the function "ROOT", by calling it using the "Insert function" button. In the window that will open, it remains to specify the data to be calculated, for example, the difference in the values of the two cells, and click "OK".

In the second case, using a more readable version, with an explicit specification of the degree of the number, we obtain the following expression for finding the square root of the number, for example, 9:

The result of this action is "3".