What is 3^3.2 to the nearest whole number?

[Fireal]

In the quiz we are asked to find 3^3.2 to the nearest whole number?

I’ve looked through the lectures but I don’t see how you would work this out without a calculator?

I’ve tried applying what has been taught so far to work this out myself, but I’m struggling to arrive at 34 (33.64 rounded)

[Fireal]

I’m able to work out what 3.2^3 is by modifying the logic for for a squared number to a cubed number, but not for a decimal exponent? i.e. 3^3.2

I looked it up on google, the explanations are pretty advanced?!

Thanks.

[garypettie]

Hi @Fireal,
Whilst solving problems by hand can be a good skill to have, it can be a little unnecessary in some cases. Especially for problems like this one, where it would take you ages to convert your answer into its final decimal form.

If you were to solve it by hand though, you’d probably turn to the index laws to help manipulate and simplify the problem but you will still end up with a surd at the end, which would need converting to a decimal.

These days, everyone would just punch that final step into a calculator, since the conversion process is unnecessarily time consuming.
For that reason, we don’t cover the process in the course because it’s highly likely that you’ll never actually use it in real life. Plus, if you need a calculator for the last step you could equally just use it for the first step and save yourself some trouble.

If you wanted to do it in code, you could turn to Math.Pow(base, exponent) to do the work for you.

[Fireal]

Thanks for the quick response Gary.

I wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, but if using a calculator was the expectation I’m good with that