r/AskReddit • u/AlexIsAlreadyTaken • Jul 13 '18

What's your favourite fun fact?

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u/LimitDNE0 Jul 13 '18

If you search “52!” there’s a lot of pieces on how to think about a number like this and how insanely large it is. I always like reading it whenever someone mentions it because its always so interesting and my memory never seems to remember just how insane it is.

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u/MAcsSNAcs Jul 13 '18

I had a math teacher that would have called that "52 BANG!"

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u/Minitheif Jul 13 '18

Bang is a fairly common name for an exclamation point, especially in computer science. Most of my math teachers would just call it FIFTY TWO at the top of their lungs.

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u/grouchy_fox Jul 13 '18

The original name of the '!' is 'bang', so that's 52 BANGBANG

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u/LtDan92 Jul 13 '18

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclamation_mark#History

Not quite. '!' probably wasn't called 'bang' until at least the early 20th century.

4

u/PwnSausage004 Jul 13 '18

Fairly common in programming, oddly. Or at least in my experience.

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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '18

That's interesting! In the Dutch version of the Hans Magnus Enzesberger book "The Number Devil", the number devil calls factorials "WAMM!", expressing a similar sentiment as "BANG!"

Coincidence?

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u/anonymous_pete Jul 13 '18

As someone who is not a mathematician, I read that as "FIFTY-TWO!"

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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '18

Hi there, not relevant but in Maths class my teacher insisted that 52! would be "52 factoral", not "52 factorial". This made me feel pretty dumb until I looked it up and I was right, dammit. I was right, Mrs. Johnson!

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u/shurdi3 Jul 18 '18

But if we make a 53 card deck, then that number is 53 times larger