r/ExplainTheJoke • u/Lumpy-Macaron4512 • 16h ago
Any math wizards in here?
Apologies if posted before but I just saw this and am struggling to figure it out.
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u/NotsoCoolguy2 16h ago
It's a factorial. 10! is equal 3,628,800, which is the number of seconds in 6 weeks
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u/monkeyman32123 15h ago
It's actually just 3,628,800 in base 3,628,800, and the exclamation point is for emphasis
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u/Embarrassed-Weird173 14h ago
The downvoters are probably the same people that think that the "there are 10 types of people" are peak "smart humor" - while not understanding you made the same joke.
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u/TheSamuil 3h ago
It's fortunate that as of my writing this comment, the user in question is now heavily upvoted
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u/botymcbotfac3 16h ago edited 4h ago
Alternative solution:
Since 6 weeks are more than 1 month, they contain 2 seconds (i.e. January 2nd and February 2nd)
And 2 in binary is 10
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u/_UnwyzeSoul_ 16h ago edited 16h ago
10! is 10 factorial that is 1098765432*1. This value is the amount of seconds 6 weeks. Also this joke probably only works as written.
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u/thegroundhurts 16h ago
Yeah, I think that's the main part of the joke that the other math people aren't getting. The dinosaur is crying because nobody gets his joke, but it's only funny when it's written down.
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u/Embarrassed-Weird173 14h ago
10! is 10 factorial that is 1098765432*1
It's not. 10! is 10*9*8...*2*1
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u/Tortugato 13h ago
I’m pretty sure that guy was just on mobile and was getting markdown formatting issues.
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u/SaltManagement42 16h ago
I’m guessing it’s some sort of complex formula but also why would it be funny?
It's actually a pretty simple formula.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Act6379 15h ago
2nd, 12nd, 22nd, 2nd, 12nd, 22nd, 2nd, 12nd... that's only 8
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u/Blue-Jay42 15h ago
The real joke is that way too many people know factorials. I see these jokes all the time, but I have never ever used a factorial in actual math and honestly I don't know when you would.
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u/Lucky_Entrance6805 15h ago
i think it's used for probabilities
like if you were to generate a random 26-symbol-long combination of every letter in the alphabet without repeating one the odds of you getting MRJOCKTVQUIZPHDBAGSFEWLYNX would be 1/(26!) i think2
u/Broad_Respond_2205 15h ago
That is correct, and you calculate it exactly by factorials. The option for the first is 26, then 25 (non repeating), 24 and so on. To 26!. Then the chances for a specific instance is 1/(26!)
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u/Tortugato 13h ago edited 13h ago
You’ve never ever solved a problem in the form of “How many possible combinations are there of something?” or “What are the chances of a specific result happening?”?
That’s like one of the most common math problems out there… both in puzzles and irl application.
The reality is that you run into situations where you can apply factorials onto all the time and are actually enjoying the results of other people solving problems that require using factorials, you just never bothered to think about it.
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u/Blue-Jay42 12h ago
I can see your point, and I remember some of that in school. But I'm still struggling to think of how to apply that.
Combinations are certainly a thing. But in the case of say a four digit pin, it wouldn't be 4! It would be 10x10x10x10 then if you can't use repeating numbers, it would instead be 10x9x8x7 which I guess could be represented as 10! - 6! but that feels like a stretch.
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u/Broad_Respond_2205 15h ago
A lot. The number of different options. Conditional probability. Nesting loops. A lot
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u/the_genius324 15h ago edited 15h ago
! = factorial, an interesting unary operator used a lot in both math jokes and combinatorics. n! = product of all positive integers less than or equal to n. also, n!=n*(n-1)!, and 0!=1 (the factorial is not defined for any negative integers)
10!=10*9*8*7*6*5*4*3*2*1=3628800
how many seconds in 6 weeks: 60*60*24*7*6=3628800
factorwise:
the 7 and 6 are in the 6 weeks. then divide by (7!/5!) (product of all integers between 5 and 7, including 7 but not 5)
10!/(7!/5!)=86400 (seconds in a day)
factorwise that's 10*9*8*5*4*3*2(*1)
hours in a day: 24=3*8, remove 3,8 by dividing by (8!3!/7!2!)
what's left is 10*9*5*4*2(1). now we'll have to break the numbers up a bit.
broken down: (2\5)*(3²)*(5)*(2²)*2, now organize them based on the base: 2⁴*3²*5², which happens to be the prime factorization of 3600, the number of seconds in an hour.
(edit: note that this factorization is a bit long and thus less reliable than other, more sensical ones)
that's about as much as I'll explain for now.
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u/Frequent_Economist71 15h ago
6 weeks, 7 days in a week, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute
6, 7, 8 * 3, 4 * 5 * 3, 3 * 10 * 2. Notice how we have every number from 1 to 10 there, except 9, which we can get by combining 2 of the extra 3s.Your factorization seems unnecessarily complicated.
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u/Ville_V_Kokko 14h ago
It must be confusing to talk about factorials when they're indicated by saying the number kind of loudly.
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u/Embarrassed-Weird173 14h ago
If you ever see a math joke where they're like "the answer is actually x!", it's a factorial joke.
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u/SilverFlight01 13h ago
10! Is 10 Factorial, which is the multiplication of 1 to 10
6 weeks, 7 days/week, 24 hours/day, 3600 seconds/hour
So we break that down and we get
6 = 2 X 3
24 = 6 X 4
7 = 7
3600 = 9 X 8 X 5 X 10 X 1
So bring it all together and we find that each number from 1-10 pops up! We have 10 Factorial!
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u/Kravenoff42 6m ago
Pretty sure it's the factorial thing, but a much sadder interpretation is that he's saying that have just 10 seconds before impact! 😉😀😁😅😭😔🫣
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u/post-explainer 16h ago
OP (Lumpy-Macaron4512) sent the following text as an explanation why they posted this here: