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The formula of Stirling (James Stirling, , Scottish mathematician, born in May 1692 in Garden near Stirling and died on December 5, 1770 in Edinburgh ) allows to approximate the factorial of a number.
This improved formula will give a better approach:
When the function ! (factorial) does not exist on a calculator, this calculation of factorial of a number is usually done on programmable calculators thanks to an iterative loop.
This kind of calculation can be very inexpensive in terms of number of steps but excessive in time for large numbers.
On the other hand, the Stirling formula gives an approximation of the result very quickly but costs a few program steps.
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