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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!umd5!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: BIG numbers (was Copyrighting Icons)
Message-ID: <7757@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 24 Apr 88 19:20:00 GMT
References: <24@imspw6.UUCP> <1522@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <1707@pixar.UUCP> <585@nvuxr.UUCP> <10441@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <7530@boring.cwi.nl> <4452@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 17
Keywords: calculation

In article <4452@ihlpf.ATT.COM> straka@ihlpf.UUCP (55223-Straka,R.J.) writes:
-In article <7530@boring.cwi.nl> jurjen@cwi.nl (Jurjen N.E. Bos) writes:
->In article <10441@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> sarrel@oboe.cis.ohio-state.edu (Marc Sarrel) writes:
-||	2^(16*16+1) = 231,584,178,474,632,390,847,141,970,017,375,815,706,539,
-||                          969,331,281,128,078,915,168,015,826,259,279,872
-|because I have at least three programs that can do that. By the way, it
-|will give you some three lines of digits.
-A old scientific calculator DA from what was Batteries Included will easily
-handle numbers up to about 1E5000.  I just did 2^(16*16*16), and got
-1.044388881e+1233.  Also, did you know that 1750! = 2.098318983e+4917?

There is a considerable difference between a large exponent range and
a large number of significant digits.  The former is easy; the latter
is hard (at least if you try to compute as fast as possible it is).

Stirling's formula can be used to obtain good approximations for large
factorials.