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Extracting the 13th root of a number is a famous category for the mental calculation world records. [1] The challenge consists of being given a large number (possibly over 100 digits) and asked to return the number that, when taken to the 13th power, equals the given number. For example, the 13th root of 8,192 is 2 and the 13th root of 96,889,010,407 is 7.
Extracting the 13th root has certain properties. One is that the 13th root of a number is much smaller: a 13th root will have approximately 1/13th the number of digits. Thus, the 13th root of a 100-digit number only has 8 digits and the 13th root of a 200-digit number will have 16 digits. Furthermore, the last digit of the 13th root is always the same as the last digit of the power.
For the 13th root of a 100-digit number there are 7,992,563 possibilities, in the range 41,246,264 – 49,238,826. This is considered a relatively easy calculation. There are 393,544,396,177,593 possibilities, in the range 2,030,917,620,904,736 – 2,424,462,017,082,328, for the 13th root of a 200-digit number. This is considered a difficult calculation.
The Guinness Book of World Records has published records for extracting the 13th root of a 100-digit number. All world records for mentally extracting a 13th root have been for numbers with an integer root:
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