this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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The fuck is a "factorial"? They didn't teach me that one in high school math and I couldn't afford college.
Factorial means n! = (n)(n-1)(n-2)... etc. down to 1, where n is a positive integer. It's used to calculate the different number of configurations of a set of elements, mainly in combinatorics.
Like if you have four different objects and you want to know how many different configurations you can order them in, you have four choices for the first object, then three for the second, then two for the third, then one for the final slot. So the answer is 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24 = 4!.
What's the point of factorials?
Makes things shorter.
In the applications mentioned by other people, you run into calculations that would look really messy and confusing. Things like 5•4•3•2•1 can be shorted to just 5! Imagine writing the full version of 123!