Is there a short-hand for nth root of x, in Python?

Question

In maths, if I wish to calculate 3 to the power of 2 then no symbol is required, but I write the 2 small: 3². In Python this operation seems to be represented by the ** syntax.

>>> 3**2
9

If I want to go the other direction and calculate the 2nd root of 9 then in maths I need to use a symbol: 2√9 = 3

Is there a short-hand symbol in Python, similar to ** that achieves this i.e. 2<symbol>9? Or do I need to use the math module?

Answer 1

nth root of x is x^(1/n), so you can do 9**(1/2) to find the 2nd root of 9, for example. In general, you can compute the nth root of x as:

x**(1/n)

Note: In Python 2, you had to do 1/float(n) or 1.0/n so that the result would be a float rather than an int. For more details, see Why does Python give the "wrong" answer for square root?

Answer 2

You may also use some logarithms:

Nth root of x:

exp(log(x)/n)

For example:

>>> from math import exp, log
>>> x = 8
>>> n = 3
>>> exp(log(x)/n)
2.0