Calculate cube roots instantly in your head

[pokerfan]

Oh, this is brilliant! Amaze your friends. You don't even have to be that smart.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Neato!

[pokerfan]

2. I thought so

http://www.mindmagician.org/cubert.aspx

[bvar22]

3. Cool Cubed!!!

!

[SwissTony]

4. Brilliant. All I need is a calculator so that my friends can work out cubes. n/t

[BadgerKid]

5. These shortcuts have their place, BUT

-- not at all to go ballistic towards you -- this is exactly the type of thing that educators, scientists, and employers loathe since in and of itself, it conveys a false sense of understanding. It does help train your brain for pattern recognition, which is a nice scientific skill to have. It's good in math and computer programming because if your problem can be reduced to a solved problem, you're golden. Otherwise, you're hosed and then you need to understand how to do things the long, drawn-out way or to come up with something yourself.

My nephew likes these things; it's one of the few things that keeps his mind active and generally motivated about math.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

6. That was awesome.

Now if I could just remember the cubes of anything past 6.

[dipsydoodle]

8. My father could do that with roots up to 16th.

He'd memorised the log and anti-log tables

I only said to 16th because after that he'd need to think about it. There was apparently some importance to 16 times tables from the past which I still don't understand. He'd got he me to learn 16 x to 12 when I was 6 six years old.

Its easy to calculate square roots longhand and presumably there's a way to do that with other powers too.