On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 02:45:10PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Thomas Lockhart writes:
>
> > Keep in mind that he is a mathematician, and I'll guess that he won't
> > have much patience with folks who expect a result for a factorial of a
> > fractional number ;)
>
> Real mathematicians will be perfectly happy with a factorial for a
> fractional number, as long as it's properly and consistently defined. ;-)
>
> Seriously, there is a well-established definition of factorials of
> non-integral real numbers, but the current behaviour is probably the most
> intuitive for the vast majority of users.
I would be happy with with exp(lgamma(x+1)) as a synonym for x!
(So 4.3!=38.078 as far as I'm concerned :) )
Cheers,
Patrick