AN excerpt from an article I read on skewes number...
I need A cup of tea after that!!!
Skewes (pronounced in two syllables, Skew'ease)
So let's take all fifty-two cards and let's arrange to have the order count as well as the
nature of the cards. You begin with a deck in which the cards are-in a certain order. You
shuffle it and end with a different order. You shuffle it again and end with yet another
order. How many different orders are there? Remember that any difference in order,
however small, makes a different order. If two orders are identical except for the
interchange of two adjacent cards, they are two different orders.
To answer that Question, we figure that the first card can be any of the fifty-two, the
second any of the remaining fifty-one, the third any of the remaining fifty, and so on. The
total number of different orders is 52x51x50…..x4x3x2x1, In other words, the number of
different orders is equal to the product of the first fifty-two numbers. This is called "factorial
fifty-two" and can be written "52!"
The value of 52! is, roughly, a one followed by sixty-eight zeros; in other words, a hundred
decillion decillion. (You are welcome to work out the multiplication if you doubt this, but if
you try, please be prepared for a long haul.) This is an absolutely terrific number to get out
of one ordinary deck of cards that most of us use constantly without any feeling of being
overwhelmed. The number of different orders into which that ordinary deck can be placed
is about ten times as great as all the subatomic particles in our entire Milky Way galaxy.
