Why can't Matlab do the factorial of a non-integer number?
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Hi,
I tried using the factorial function on a number with decimals and got the following error: N must be an array of real non-negative integers.
Is there an alternative so that it can calculate the factorial of a number with decimals like Excel does?
Thanks for your time
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Accepted Answer
Davide Masiello
on 6 Feb 2022
Edited: Davide Masiello
on 6 Feb 2022
MatLab 'factorial' is coded so to work with integers only.
The generalization of a factorial is the Γ function, which is
and the relation with the factorial is
MatLab implements the Γ function. Therefore, to compute the factorial of 1.5 you can write
gamma(2.5)
Which yields 1.3293, the correct answer.
2 Comments
Dyuman Joshi
on 23 Jan 2024
There is no function in MATLAB, in-built or a part of the toolbox, that offers that functionality directly.
(Possibly because) There is no known explicit relation or definition which can be utilized to obtain that.
However, you can try this -
%value of which the inverse is to be calculated
y = gamma(2.5)
f = @(x, val) gamma(x) - val;
out = fzero(@(x) f(x, y), 2)
But note that the inverse gamma function is not one-on-one (reference - Graph of the function provided in its wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_gamma_function), so multiple solutions exist for each input.
The value obtained as the output depends on the initial guess -
%Finding the inverse for the same, but with initial guess as 1
fzero(@(x) f(x, y), 1)
More Answers (2)
DGM
on 6 Feb 2022
See the Gamma function
Or in MATLAB, gamma().
Note that if you're trying to replicate the behavior of factorial, the input is offset by 1:
factorial([2 3 4])
gamma([2 2.5 3 3.2 3.6 4])
gamma([2 2.5 3 3.2 3.6 4]+1) % offset by 1
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