[Math] Inverse factorial function

factorialinverse function

I am wondering what is the inverse/opposite factorial function?
e.g inverse-factorial(6)=3

Furthermore, I am intrigued to know the answer to:

a!=π
find a

I would really appreciate if anyone could explain this to me as I have found nowhere online with a good explanation of inverse factorial functions.
Thanks

Best Answer

Unfortunately there is not a closed form or nice series for the inverse of the factorial (or Gamma function).

First obstacle is that the factorial has a local minimum at $x:\;\psi(x)=0\; \to \; x=0.4616..$, so , considering only positive values of the argument, that gives you two values for the inverse.

For an analysis of the problem please refer to this and this papers.
A lighter look is given in this other paper.

Finally an interesting approximated function is given here.

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