You would do the innermost operation first, so for your first example: squaring a cubed root- you would first take the cubed root, get your answer, and square that answer. For example what's the square of the cubed root of 8? Well, the cubed root of 8 is 2. (Because multiplying 2, three times will give me 8). Since the cubed root of 8 is 2, I need to square 2 and I'll get 4.