arixlove
can someone explain to me why we can write the denominator as 2 to 5000 (how do we know there are exactly 5000 2's? I dont' see it) MULTIPLIED BY 5000!
thanks
Half of the positive integers up to 10,000 are even, so there are 5000 positive even integers up to 10,000. If we list them, in descending order, we have
10000, 9998, 9996, ..., 6, 4, 2
From each, we can factor out a 2, so we can rewrite the numbers above in this way:
(2)(5000), (2)(4999), (2)(4998), ..., (2)(3), (2)(2), (2)(1)
Now if we multiply these 5000 things together, we have all 5000 of the 2's that we just factored out, giving us 2^5000, along with the product of the other numbers, 5000*4999*4998*...*3*2*1 = 5000!. So the product of the positive even numbers up to 10,000 is equal to 2^5000 * 5000!. The product of all of the positive integers up to 10,000 is 10,000!, so if we cancel the even numbers from 10,000!, by dividing by 2^5000*5000!, that will leave us with the product of the odd numbers up to 10,000.