Alexis Lemaire has broken the record for finding the 13th root of a 200-digit number. It's an incredibly hard calculation so how does the "human calculator" do it
Fancy yourself as a bit of mental arithmetics buff, one of those who relishes totting up the bill after a restaurant meal for 12, one of those who looks down their nose at calculator users?
Well try this for size.
The task is to find the 13th root of 85,877,066,894,718,045,
602,549,144,850,158,599,202,771,247,748,960,878,023,151,
390,314,284,284,465,842,798,373,290,242,826,571,823,153,
045,030,300,932,591,615,405,929,429,773,640,895,967,991,
430,381,763,526,613,357,308,674,592,650,724,521,841,103,
664,923,661,204,223.
The answer's 2396232838850303. Multiply that by itself 13 times and you get the above. Even with a calculator you wouldn't beat Alexis Lemaire doing the calculation in his head
How does a human calculator do it?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6913236.stm
Use of undefined constants causes assumptions!
