Stirling's Approximation

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Stirling's approximation for N!:

N! ~ sqrt(2 π N).(N/e)N + ...

hence

loge(N!) ~ N.loge(N) - N + 0.5 loge(N) + 0.5 loge(2 pi) +...

function Stirling(N) // JavaScript
 { return
    (N+0.5)*Math.log(N) - N + Math.log(2*Math.PI)/2;
 }

L
.
A
.
N=

Factorial is generalized by the Γ function to real, and even complex, values. For a +ve int, n, Γn=(n-1)!.

Notes

D. E. Knuth in The Art of Computer Programming, Fundamental Algorithms, Vol.1, p.46, (1969), gives the reference as:
James Stirling. Methodus Differentialis, p.137, (1730).
On page 111 of his book, Knuth derives a more accurate approximation:
N! = sqrt(2 π N) (N/e)N {1 + 1/12N + 1/288N2 - 139/51840N3 - 571/2488320N4 + O(1/N5)}
-- L.A., 1999, 2000, 2007, Australia.
Coding Ockham's Razor, L. Allison, Springer

A Practical Introduction to Denotational Semantics, L. Allison, CUP

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© L. Allison   http://www.allisons.org/ll/   (or as otherwise indicated),
Faculty of Information Technology (Clayton), Monash University, Australia 3800 (6/'05 was School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Fac. Info. Tech., Monash University,
was Department of Computer Science, Fac. Comp. & Info. Tech., '89 was Department of Computer Science, Fac. Sci., '68-'71 was Department of Information Science, Fac. Sci.)
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