No one asked what I was doing with 120,526,770 records

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Sat, Feb 12, 2005 at 08:32:29PM -0500, Michael J. Mc Avoy Sr. wrote:
> I sure thought at least one of ya would want to
> know what I was doing with all these dang records.
> 
> Hint....
> 
> 53/5*52/4*51/3*50/2*49*42

You're trying to create one record for every possible combination of
numbers in a 53/6 lottery?

The answer is, of course, 53!/47!.  bc will do *those* numbers, too,
IIRC.  (Yes, it will, though factorial isn't a built in function; it's
in the manpage.)

But you have the final answer wrong, unless I'm missing something
important:

53! / 47! = 53*52*51*50*49*48 = 16,529,385,600

Why are you dividing?  Is this a powerball *specific* weird set o'
rules?

Cheers,
-- jr 'yes, I did skip to the end of the test' a
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
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      If you can read this... thank a system adminstrator.  Or two.  --me