I don't want to sound smug or anything, but didn't you study it in school? In Spain we learn it in fifth or sixth grade, just after learning the concept of square root. I thought it was basic enough to be studied at about that age in the rest of the world.
The algorithm is a little complicated compared to other things that we study at that age, but it's not really difficult, although most (and I mean MOST) people, even engineers and such, forget it when they don't need it any more. It infuriates me a little that no teacher explained to us why did it work, but that gave me oportunity to "reverse engineer" the method a few years later, and expand it to a generic n-root algorithm.
The algorithm is a little complicated compared to other things that we study at that age, but it's not really difficult, although most (and I mean MOST) people, even engineers and such, forget it when they don't need it any more. It infuriates me a little that no teacher explained to us why did it work, but that gave me oportunity to "reverse engineer" the method a few years later, and expand it to a generic n-root algorithm.