You may have noticed that using expanded form to simplify a factorial expression, even with the ellipsis, requires a lot of writing. Factorial notation is all about using shorthand, so you might assume a shorter method is available to simplify an expression such as
. Complete the
What's the Score
questions to investigate this possibility.
|
Complete the questions to investigate various ways of writing factorials. Hold your mouse over the expressions or questions to verify your answers . If you have any difficulty with these solutions, please contact your teacher before continuing. |
-
Use your calculator to evaluate the following expressions.
After completing What's the Score? , you know that writing a factorial in a variety of ways without changing its value is possible. For example:
120 = 5!
120 = 5 x 4!
120 = 5 x 4 x 3!
120 = 5 x 4 x 3 x 2!
120 = 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1!
You can use this knowledge to help simplify fractions that involve factorials.