What factorial is closest to the factorial of 2024?

A good guess would be 1012, based on the idea that √(n!) might be near (n/2)!.

This isn’t correct—the actual answer is 1112—but it’s not wildly off.

Could it be that (2n)! is asymptotically (n!)²?

No, Gauss’ duplication formula

Gamma(2z) = frac{1}{sqrt{2pi}} 2^{2z - 1/2} Gamma(z) Gammaleft(z + frac{1}{2}right)

shows that the ratio of (2n)! to (n!)² grows exponentially as a function of n.

However, the ratio only grows exponentially, and factorials grow faster than exponentially. I believe that the value of m minimizing

| √(n!) – m! |

asymptotically approaches n/2. In other words, the inverse factorial of  √(n!) approaches n/2. And more generally the inverse factorial of (n!)1/k asymptotically approaches n/k. I haven’t written out a proof, but the plot below shows numerical evidence.

So √(n!) is not asymptotically (n/2)!, but the inverse factorial of √(n!) is asymptotically n/2.

See the next post for a way to compute inverse factorials.

The post Square root factorial first appeared on John D. Cook.

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