[R] large factorials

[Wacek Kusnierczyk]

J Dougherty wrote:
> 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.
>   

octave works similarly to *matlab* (to the point some call it a 'matlab
clone').  it's not so close to mathematica.

vQ