Unexpected Factorial@sopuli.xyzEnglish · 16 days ago

I’m 19!

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I’m 19!

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Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyzM to

Unexpected Factorial@sopuli.xyzEnglish · 16 days ago

Which is about 1.2*10^17. Makes me feel very young now that I see how old some Lemmy users are.

Just for reference, the age of the universe is estimated to be around 13.787 *10^9 years.

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Krafty Kactus@sopuli.xyz
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16 days ago
Small world huh? Leo follows me and just showed up on my feed. I swear Fedi has an algorithm sometimes.

Unexpected Factorial@sopuli.xyz

unexpectedfactorial@sopuli.xyz

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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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