Square root of 2 the square root of two, with a reasonable small denominator, the fraction (≈ 1.4142857) is sometimes used. The sequence in the OEIS gives the numerical value for the square root of two, truncated to 65 decimal places: The Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289 (c. 1800–1600 BC) gives an approximation of in four sexagesimal figures, , which is accurate to about six decimal digits, and is the closest possible three-place sexagesimal representation of : Another early close approximation is given in ancient Indian mathematical texts, the Sulbasutras (c. 800–200 BC) as follows: "Increase the length [of the side] by its third
Square root of a matrix square roots. Such a matrix, , has a decomposition where is the matrix whose columns are eigenvectors of and is the diagonal matrix whose diagonal elements are the corresponding eigenvalues . Thus the square roots of are given by , where is any square root matrix of , which, for distinct eigenvalues, must be diagonal with diagonal elements equal to square roots of the diagonal elements of ; since there are two possible choices for a square root of each diagonal element of , there are 2 choices for the matrix . This also leads to a proof of the