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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Math Memes
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I understand why this is wrong (order of operations dictates the division happens first, so it's really 25 - 1 = 24), but why is it funny? I don't mean "This isn't funny," I think I'm just missing the joke.
4! Is meant to be 4 factorial. 4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24
The fuck is a "factorial"? They didn't teach me that one in high school math and I couldn't afford college.
You didn't learn factorials in high school?
Im sorry your highschool curriculum failed to teach you. I learned factorals in jr highschool
Factorial means n! = (n)(n-1)(n-2)... etc. down to 1, where n is a positive integer. It's used to calculate the different number of configurations of a set of elements, mainly in combinatorics.
Like if you have four different objects and you want to know how many different configurations you can order them in, you have four choices for the first object, then three for the second, then two for the third, then one for the final slot. So the answer is 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24 = 4!.
What's the point of factorials?
Makes things shorter.
In the applications mentioned by other people, you run into calculations that would look really messy and confusing. Things like 5•4•3•2•1 can be shorted to just 5! Imagine writing the full version of 123!
They're used in permutations and combinations a lot. Combinations is pretty obvious based on the name. Given X things, how many ways are there to choose Y. Permutations are the same but where order matters.
For example, if you shuffle a deck of cards properly randomly there will be 52! possible orderings (permutations).
There are lots of applications, so I’ll give you three
Factorials are used in the Taylor Series to approximate trigonometric (sine, cosine, etc) and the exponential function. This can help speed up calculations.
In probability and statistics, if you want to find how many different ways a deck of cards can be shuffled, the answer is 52! Because the first card can be any of the 52, the second can be any of the remaining 51, and so on until the last card. Building upon this concept results in ways to model data like the binomial distribution , which is simply “how many successes will i get if i do this trial a certain number of times”. E.g. If I flip a coin 100 times, how many times will it be heads?
In computer science, the complexity of a program is compared to functions like the factorial, exponential, quadratic, etc. to visualize it’s performance given the size of the input, n. E.g. a program of linear time complexity is denoted as O(n), and as n increases, we expect the time for the program to finish to increase linearly. For a factorial time complexity, O(n!), we expect the time to complete to increase a lot compared to O(n)
Aha! Got it, thank you so much.
Or if you don’t know order of operations, then you probably also don’t know factorials, so 20 / 5 = 4
And here I was thinking I was still decent at math. I got bamboozled...
Everybody forgets the factorial...
!unexpectedfactorial@sopuli.xyz
I always get a chuckle every time someone posted this in an unrelated comment.
Especially when we have never seen that shit before
4! Is a factorial which means it's 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24
Totally missed that. Thank you.
I see no one has explained yet, so I'll give it a shot. He is excited about math, and that needs to be encouraged.
4 factorial
The exclamation point denotes the factorial function. 4! = 4 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 2 ⋅ 1
The exclamation point makes it right. The formula, when worked with proper order of operations, equals 24, which is equal to 4 factorial (4!) 1 * 2 * 3 * 4=24
Cause math people has a weird humor?
Sorry to said that, but you made my guess quite real.
The exclamation point in the answer, from a math perspective, makes it 4 factorial: 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24, which is the correct answer.
Could it be you’re responding to the wrong person?
Indeed, it could.