Lorem Ipsum

It turns out that there are 8 factorial minutes in February. And that’s not just a random coincidence; in fact, you can demonstrate that it’s true without performing any multiplication at all, just some easy factoring.

1. February contains four weeks.

2. The number of minutes in four weeks can be expressed as:

   4 weeks x 7 days/week x 24 hours/day x 60 minutes/hour

3. Now factor 24 and 60, to get this:

   4 weeks x 7 days/week x (3 x 8) hours/day x (2 x 5 x 6) minutes/hour

4. Which is to say, removing the units that cancel out:

   4 x 7 x 3 x 8 x 2 x 5 x 6 minutes

5. Or, reordering those numbers:

   8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 (x 1) minutes

6. Which is 8 factorial.

(Credit: someone posted this at work the other day, but I got the impression they had heard it somewhere else.)

Edited to add: This doesn’t apply to leap-year Februaries.