Three Flavours of FACTorial in Excel
What is a Factorial?
In mathematics, Factorial of a natural number n (denoted as n!) is the product of all natural
numbers preceding (and including) n.
For example, if n=6,
then n! = 1*2*3*4*5*6=720
How to calculate Factorials in
Excel?
There are (at least) three methods
to calculate a Factorial in Excel:
1)
Using the built-in FACT function, with one argument: n
=FACT(6)
Picture No.1: =FACT(6)
2)
Using the PRODUCT function, with the numbers:
1,2,3,..n. The numbers can be entered one by one (not necessarily in their natural
order) or by selecting a range which contains the array (i.e. A1:A6 which
contains these numbers in any order: ascending, descending or unordered)
=PRODUCT(A1:A6)
or
=PRODUCT(1,2,3,4,5,6)
or
=PRODUCT(6,5,4,3,2,1)
Picture No.2: =PRODUCT(A1:A6)
3)
Using the SUMPRODUCT function. This function usually
takes at least 2 arrays (or ranges) and returns the sum of their products. But
we’ll just enter the numbers, where each number is an array of 1 element: it’s
as if we have 6 arrays (with one element in each array)…Here, too, the order of
the elements doesn’t matter.
=SUMPRODUCT(1,2,3,4,5,6)
or
=SUMPRODUCT(6,4,5,2,3,1)
Picture No.3: =SUMPRODUCT(1,2,3,4,5,6)
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