Factorial of 140

Counting with 140!

There are 1.3462 × 10^241 different ways to arrange 140 different books on a shelf: 140 choices for the first place, 139 for the second, and so on down to one choice for the last. If you only fill the first three places, as with gold, silver and bronze among 140 runners, there are 140 × 139 × 138 = 2,685,480 possible podiums. If the order does not matter, divide by 3! = 6 to get 447,580 ways to choose a group of three. Choosing a pair from 140 people can be done in 9,730 ways.

In probability, if 140 names are drawn out of a hat one at a time, the chance of drawing them in one particular order is 1 in 1.3462 × 10^241. That is why shuffled decks and passwords with many symbols are so hard to guess.

How big is 140!?

140! has 242 digits, so it is larger than the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe (about 10^80). The digits add up to 954, a multiple of 9, as they are for every factorial from 6! on. Stirling's formula, √(2πn) × (n/e)^n, gives a close estimate without multiplying everything out, and gets more accurate as n grows.

Prime factors of 140!

Every prime up to 140 divides 140!. Legendre's formula counts how often: add ⌊n/p⌋ + ⌊n/p²⌋ + ⌊n/p³⌋ + … for each prime p. For 140! that gives 2^137 × 3^67 × 5^34 × 7^22 × 11^13 × 13^10 × 17^8 × 19^7 × 23^6 × 29^4 × … (34 primes in all). The 34 trailing zeros come from pairing the 34 factors of 5 with factors of 2.

Shuffles where nothing stays put

A related count is the number of derangements of 140 items: orders in which no item ends up in its original place, as in a Secret Santa where nobody draws their own name. The count is the whole number nearest to 140! ÷ e, so about 36.8% of all 1.3462 × 10^241 orders are derangements. From about four items on, that share stays close to 1 ÷ e, roughly 37%, however many items there are.

Computing 140! yourself

In Excel or Google Sheets, type =FACT(140). Spreadsheets keep only 15 significant digits, so from 18! on the result is rounded, and FACT stops at 170!, the largest factorial that fits in a standard floating-point number. In Python, math.factorial(140) returns the exact integer with all 242 digits, because Python integers have no size limit. The gamma function extends factorials to fractions: Γ(n + 1) = n!, so (1/2)! = √π ÷ 2 ≈ 0.8862.

Why is 0! equal to 1?

There is exactly one way to arrange nothing, and the rule n! = n × (n − 1)! only works for n = 1 if 0! = 1. Defining it this way keeps formulas for combinations and series correct at the edges.