[R] large factorials

[J Dougherty]

On Wednesday 22 April 2009 12:21:41 pm molinar wrote:
> I am working on a project that requires me to do very large factorial
> evaluations.  On R the built in factorial function and the one I created
> both are not able to do factorials over 170.  The first gives an error and
> mine return Inf.
>
> Is there a way to have R do these larger calculations (the calculator in
> accessories can do 10000 factorial and Maple can do even larger)

If you need an open source arbitrary precision calculator, you might want to 
look at Octave which is OS and works similarly to Mathematica  - up to a point 
books for Mathematica will be a significant help with Octave.

JDougherty