In lieu of a real blog post, which will have to wait for at least another two weeks, let me offer an estimation exercise: bound, as best you can, the unique positive real root of the polynomial
.
The intermediate value theorem shows that , which was the subject of a recent math.SE question that provided the inspiration for this question. I provide a stronger lower bound on
using elementary inequalities and entirely by hand in an answer to the linked question, although I don’t try to improve the upper bound.