threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works to

Unexpected Factorial@sopuli.xyzEnglish · 10 months ago

[email protected] is positively ancient

sh.itjust.works

5

58

[email protected] is positively ancient

sh.itjust.works

threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works to

Unexpected Factorial@sopuli.xyzEnglish · 10 months ago

5

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/11087699

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gimpchrist @lemmy.world
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10 months ago
But when I say pi is just a little symbol thingy all the math people got really fucking mad at me the other day

Unexpected Factorial@sopuli.xyz

unexpectedfactorial@sopuli.xyz

You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]

When you use an exclamation mark with a number, you’re actually implying it’s not a normal number any more. It’s a factorial!

Ok, so how does this work?

5!=1×2×3×4×5=120

6!=720

These numbers get really large. For example:

15!≈1.3×10^12

So, next time you see a headline with 2000! in it, you’ll know what to expect.

There are also double factorials (n!!) and iterated factorials (n!)!, and they aren’t the same thing. Just add more exclamation marks and you get multifactorial. Check wikipedia to see how spicy it gets.

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