Factorial of 149

Counting with 149!

There are 3.8089 × 10^260 different ways to arrange 149 different books on a shelf: 149 choices for the first place, 148 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 149 runners, there are 149 × 148 × 147 = 3,241,644 possible podiums. If the order does not matter, divide by 3! = 6 to get 540,274 ways to choose a group of three. Choosing a pair from 149 people can be done in 11,026 ways.

In probability, if 149 names are drawn out of a hat one at a time, the chance of drawing them in one particular order is 1 in 3.8089 × 10^260. That is why shuffled decks and passwords with many symbols are so hard to guess.

How big is 149!?

149! has 261 digits, so it is larger than the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe (about 10^80). The digits add up to 1107, 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 149!

Every prime up to 149 divides 149!. Legendre's formula counts how often: add ⌊n/p⌋ + ⌊n/p²⌋ + ⌊n/p³⌋ + … for each prime p. For 149! that gives 2^145 × 3^71 × 5^35 × 7^24 × 11^14 × 13^11 × 17^8 × 19^7 × 23^6 × 29^5 × … (35 primes in all). The 35 trailing zeros come from pairing the 35 factors of 5 with factors of 2.

Shuffles where nothing stays put

A related count is the number of derangements of 149 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 149! ÷ e, so about 36.8% of all 3.8089 × 10^260 orders are derangements. From about four items on, that share stays close to 1 ÷ e, roughly 37%, however many items there are.

Computing 149! yourself

In Excel or Google Sheets, type =FACT(149). 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(149) returns the exact integer with all 261 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.