Factorials At Work
What are factorials? Why would you use factorials ?
The factorial
of a number is the Factorials are
useful. They can show
product
of all the whole numbers, how many different ways
there are to
except
zero, that are less than or order
or arrange a set of things.
equal
to that number.
N |
N! |
|
1 |
1 |
|
2 |
2 |
|
3 |
6 |
|
4 |
24 |
This shows the progression from 1 to 4 in the factorial
world. As you can see the graph jumps from 1 to 24 in just a change of 4
numbers.
How would you solve a factorial division?
6!/4!=6*5*4*3*2*1 6*5= 30.
---------------- =
4*3*2*1
Why is this? The 4! cancels
out of the 6! and leaves the 5*6 part of the problem. We all know that 5*6= 30
and there is your answer.
My Links:
http://www.themathpage.com/aPreCalc/factorial.htm
http://www.newdream.net/~sage/old/numbers/fact.htm
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Factorial.html
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/sets/mid_factorials.html
http://www.gomath.com/algebra/factorial.php
http://regentsprep.org/Regents/math/factnot/Lfact.htm
To contact Mr. Young for more
expert tutelage: dyoung@fayar.net or dyoung7@fprodigy.net
History of the Factorials:
Multiple scientists worked on this subject, but the
principal inventors are J. Stirling
in 1730 who gives the asymptotic formula after some work in collaboration with De Moivre,
then Euler
in 1751 and finally C. Kramp
and Arbogast
who introduces between 1808 and 1816 the actual notation: n!. Of course other
scientists such as Taylor
also worked a lot with this notation.
My name is Kevin
Walsh, I am in 1st period Pre-calculus with DAYoung and I made this
webpage because I have an extreme interest in factorials. Also, there is the
other reason, I made this webpage because it is a requirement on DA’s awesome
final portfolio!