To use this function, choose .
For any nonnegative number 
, the square root is the nonnegative number n such that 
. The square root can be represented by 
or 
.
For example, 
.
Syntax
SQRT(number)
For number, specify the number or column of numbers. If you enter a negative number, Minitab returns a missing value.
Examples
| Calculate expression | Result |
|---|---|
| SQRT(64) | 8 |
| SQRT(0.25) | 0.5 |
Uses
The square root has many applications in statistics. For example:
- To estimate the standard deviation in regression, Minitab calculates the square root of the mean square of the error (MSE).
- To transform skewed data using the Box-Cox transformation (with lambda = 0.5), Minitab calculates the square root of the data values.
- To make a box or range plot width proportional to the sample size, Minitab makes the width of each box proportional to the square root of the number of observations in the box.
