How to Calculate Square Root of a Number in R

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To calculate the square root of any given number in R, you can use the “sqrt()” function. For example, sqrt(16) returns 4, and sqrt(c(1, 4, 9)) returns c(1, 2, 3).

Syntax

sqrt(num)

Parameters

num: It’s a numerical value greater than 0.

Return value

It returns the square root of the input.

Example 1: Simple program to calculate square root in R

num <- 16

cat("The square root of 16 is: ", sqrt(num))

Output

The square root of 16 is: 4

Example 2: Applying sqrt() function to vector in R

To find the square root of Vector in R, you can use the sqrt() function. The sqrt() function takes a Vector as an argument and returns each element’s square root.

rv <- c(11, 19, 21, 16, 49, 46)
rv_sqrt <- sqrt(rv)

print(rv_sqrt)

Output

[1] 3.316625 4.358899 4.582576 4.000000 7.000000 6.782330

You can see that it returns the square root of every vector element.

Example 3: Applying sqrt() function to Matrix in R

To find the square root of Matrix in R, use the “sqrt()” function. The “sqrt()” function takes Matrix as an argument and returns the square root of each element.

rv <- c(11, 19, 21, 16, 49, 46)
mtrx <- matrix(rv, nrow = 2, ncol = 3)

print(mtrx)

cat("After calculating square root of matrx", "\n")
mt_sqrt <- sqrt(mtrx)

print(mt_sqrt)

Output

     [,1] [,2] [,3]
[1,]  11   21   49
[2,]  19   16   46

After calculating square root of matrx

     [,1]     [,2]      [,3]
[1,] 3.316625  4.582576  7.00000
[2,] 4.358899  4.000000  6.78233

Example 4: Applying sqrt() function to List in R

We can not find the square root of the List in R, and if we try to find it, it will give us the following error.

non-numeric argument to mathematical function

See the following code.

litt <- list(11, 19, 21, 16, 49, 46)
print(litt)

cat("After calculating square root of list", "\n")

list_sqrt <- sqrt(litt)
print(list_sqrt)

Output

After calculating square root of list
Error in sqrt(litt) : non-numeric argument to mathematical function
Execution halted

This error occurs when we are trying to find the square root of a non-numeric value.

The list and character string contain non-numeric values, returning a non-numeric argument to a mathematical function error.

Example 5: Applying sqrt() function to factor

We can get the error with Factor as well. But that error is different than the above.

fact <- factor(10)
sqrt(fact)

Output

Error in Math.factor(fact) : ‘sqrt’ not meaningful for factors
Execution halted

To calculate the square root of the factor and fix the error, use “as.numeric()” and “as.character()” with sqrt() method.

fact <- factor(10)
print("The factor is: ")

print(fact)

sqrt_fact <- sqrt(as.numeric(as.character(fact)))
print("The square root of factor is: ", sqrt_fact)

print(sqrt_fact)

Output

[1] "The factor is: "
[1] 10
Levels: 10
[1] "The square root of factor is: "
[1] 3.162278

You can see that now we get the square root of factor 10, which is 3.162278

That’s it.

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