Trouble computing the factorial of a vector

For a problem I need to get the factorial of numbers 1-50. I started by defining n = [1:50] and then typing factorial(n), but the answer seems really strange, with almost every element equaling to 0 except for the last 4.

Columns 1 through 18

0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000

Columns 19 through 36

0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000

etc.

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

No. Look CAREFULLY at that vector.

Are they really zero? Or are they just relatively zero?

F = factorial(1:50);
F([1 2 48 49])
ans =
   1.0e+62 *
    0.0000    0.0000    0.1241    6.0828

That was using the default display format. Do you see that 1.0e62* in front? What do you think that means? The ENTIRE vector as displayed is multiplied by 1e62, but SOME of those numbers are too small to display when the vector is displayed in this format. So they appear as 0.0000. Had you used a different display format, they would now show up.

format long g
F([1 2 49 50])
ans =
    1   2   6.08281864034268e+62   3.04140932017134e+64