A New Method for Fast Computation of Factorials of Numbers

Article history: Received 23 December 2012 Accepted 23 January 2013 Available online 6 February 2013 This study introduces a newly developed algorithm for fast computation of the factorial of big numbers. The algorithm reduces by half the number of multiplications required to compute the factorial of a number. Then, to speed up the multiplication process, the numbers to be multiplied are converted into binary trees. Following the conversion, the products for the left and right branches of the tree are computed synchronically, and the multiplication of the two values yields the result of the factorial. In computing the factorial of numbers rapidly, 11 non-primenumber based algorithms are used, which are compared to the method developed in this study. Analyses show that the newly developed method, in addition to being simpler and easy to use, computes the factorial of big numbers much faster compared to the other methods.