Factorial Function in Matlab?

[Naliberal]

Is there a factorial function in either the professional or
student edition of Matlab?? I have my student manual here and
I could not find a factorial function. If there is one, what
command do I use??

thanks
nabeel
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[Cleve Moler]

(Whew, at last an easy one.)

MATLAB does not have a factorial function, so n! must be computed by

prod(1:n)

or, possibly with roundoff error, by

gamma(n+1)

But, be careful, either of these quantities overflow for n > 170.
If you actually want n! to compute something like

n!/(k!*(n-k)!)

for large n, you should use

exp(sum(log(1:n))-sum(log(1:k))-sum(log(1:(n-k))))

It's not as slow as it looks, and it doesn't overflow.

-- Cleve Moler

[Naliberal]

mo...@MathWorks.COM (Cleve Moler) writes:
>MATLAB does not have a factorial function, so n! must be computed by
> prod(1:n)

>If you actually want n! to compute something like

> n!/(k!*(n-k)!)
>for large n, you should use
> exp(sum(log(1:n))-sum(log(1:k))-sum(log(1:(n-k))))

I tried both of the above methods, but they don't seem to work
in loops. Specifically, I was trying to compute n!/(k!*(n-k)!)
for values of k from 0 to 10 while holding n at a constant
value of 10. Each time, n!/(k!*(n-k)!) was only computed
once. Any suggestions on how to fix this??

Thanks