Danny wrote the following product:
He took out one of the following factorials and found that the product had become a perfect square. Find the factorial.
Notation : denotes the factorial notation. For example, .
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
Relevant wiki: Factorials Problem Solving - Intermediate
Consider the factorial : 1 ! × 2 ! × … × 1 1 9 ! × 1 2 0 !
If we group the factorials into pairs, then we can factor out a ( n ! ) 2 from each pair n ! × ( n + 1 ) !
Then, what is left is ( 2 × 4 × … 1 2 0 ) k 2 , where k 2 = ( 1 ! ) 2 × … ( 1 1 9 ! ) 2 .
So, now we need to just look at 2 × 4 × … 1 2 0 = 2 6 0 ( 6 0 ! ) , so the entire expression is k 2 × 2 6 0 × 6 0 ! = ( 2 3 0 k ) 2 × 6 0 ! .
So, we see that if we take out a 6 0 ! , then the rest of the expression would form a perfect square. So, our desired answer is 6 0 !