Factorial of 249

Counting with 249!

There are 1.2931 × 10^490 different ways to arrange 249 different books on a shelf: 249 choices for the first place, 248 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 249 runners, there are 249 × 248 × 247 = 15,252,744 possible podiums. If the order does not matter, divide by 3! = 6 to get 2,542,124 ways to choose a group of three. Choosing a pair from 249 people can be done in 30,876 ways.

In probability, if 249 names are drawn out of a hat one at a time, the chance of drawing them in one particular order is 1 in 1.2931 × 10^490. That is why shuffled decks and passwords with many symbols are so hard to guess.

How big is 249!?

249! has 491 digits, so it is larger than the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe (about 10^80). The digits add up to 1881, 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 249!

Every prime up to 249 divides 249!. Legendre's formula counts how often: add ⌊n/p⌋ + ⌊n/p²⌋ + ⌊n/p³⌋ + … for each prime p. For 249! that gives 2^243 × 3^123 × 5^59 × 7^40 × 11^24 × 13^20 × 17^14 × 19^13 × 23^10 × 29^8 × … (53 primes in all). The 59 trailing zeros come from pairing the 59 factors of 5 with factors of 2.

Shuffles where nothing stays put

A related count is the number of derangements of 249 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 249! ÷ e, so about 36.8% of all 1.2931 × 10^490 orders are derangements. From about four items on, that share stays close to 1 ÷ e, roughly 37%, however many items there are.

Computing 249! yourself

In Excel or Google Sheets, type =FACT(249). 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(249) returns the exact integer with all 491 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.