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Path: utzoo!watmath!ljdickey
From: ljdickey@watmath.UUCP (Lee Dickey)
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Square Roots give Powers
Message-ID: <9092@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Sep-84 19:56:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.9092
Posted: Thu Sep 20 19:56:37 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Sep-84 00:23:27 EDT
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 14

Some hand held calculators have logarithm and exponent keys.
But some less expensive ones have only "square roots" and "squares".  
Here is what I think: these two functions can be used to calculate 
an approximation to x^y.  Here is the algorithm that I use:

	Enter the number  x.
	Press the "square root" key  N  times.
	Subtract 1.
	Multiply by  y.
	Add 1.
	Press the "square" key  N  times.

Can you explain why the algorithm works?
How do you tell, for a given "x", what "N" should be?