Re:Defining zero factorial
by johndcook on Saturday April 11, 2015 @05:32PM
(#9360923)
That is the usual explanation, but I don't think that helps much since counting the number of ways to arrange nothing is confusing!
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Re:Defining zero factorial
by ThrustVectoring on Saturday April 11, 2015 @07:00PM
(#9361170)
Not as confusing as you'd think, though, if you invoke the rule of product.
The number of ways to do A and then B is the number of ways to do A times the number of ways to do B. The number of ways to do nothing and then A should be the same as the number of ways to do A. This implies that the number of ways to do nothing is the multiplicative identity, one.