Cube root can be done with a compass-and-straightedge construction. Newton's method is an iterative method that can be used to calculate the cube root. For real floating-point numbers this method reduces to the following iterative algorithm to produce successively better approximations of the cube root of "a": The method is simply averaging three factors chosen such that at each iteration. Halley's method improves upon this with an algorithm that converges more quickly with each step, albeit consuming more multiplication operations: With either method a poor initial approximation of "x" can give very poor algorithm performance, and coming up with a good initial
The Carnelian Cube The Carnelian Cube The Carnelian Cube is a fantasy novel by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. It was first published in hardcover by Gnome Press in 1948, and in paperback by Lancer Books in 1967. An E-book edition was published by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint on September 29, 2011 as part of a general release of de Camp's works in electronic form. It has also been translated into Italian and German. The carnelian cube of the title is a small red "dream stone" confiscated by archaeologist Arthur Cleveland Finch from Tiridat Ariminian, one of the workers