| From: | Patrick Welche <prlw1(at)newn(dot)cam(dot)ac(dot)uk> |
|---|---|
| To: | Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> |
| Cc: | Thomas Lockhart <lockhart(at)fourpalms(dot)org>, Tatsuo Ishii <t-ishii(at)sra(dot)co(dot)jp>, pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org |
| Subject: | Re: factorial doc bug? |
| Date: | 2001-09-12 15:10:22 |
| Message-ID: | 20010912161022.L19454@quartz.newn.cam.ac.uk |
| Views: | Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email |
| Thread: | |
| Lists: | pgsql-hackers |
On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 02:45:10PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Thomas Lockhart writes:
>
> > Keep in mind that he is a mathematician, and I'll guess that he won't
> > have much patience with folks who expect a result for a factorial of a
> > fractional number ;)
>
> Real mathematicians will be perfectly happy with a factorial for a
> fractional number, as long as it's properly and consistently defined. ;-)
>
> Seriously, there is a well-established definition of factorials of
> non-integral real numbers, but the current behaviour is probably the most
> intuitive for the vast majority of users.
I would be happy with with exp(lgamma(x+1)) as a synonym for x!
(So 4.3!=38.078 as far as I'm concerned :) )
Cheers,
Patrick
| From | Date | Subject | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Next Message | Giuseppe Tanzilli - CSF | 2001-09-12 15:25:16 | pg_dump patch: Allow -X'exclude table from dump by pattern' |
| Previous Message | Thomas Lockhart | 2001-09-12 15:10:12 | Re: Index location patch for review |