Friendly Factorials, a Follow-up

I'm sure the many math nerds who read this blog every day have been tut-tutting and rolling their eyes over yesterday's attempt to include a formula in my post.

I knew something was wrong, 2! was adding up to 2, that wasn't enough, so I came up with (2+1)! which does not work either, because that is 6. Then later in the day, I felt pretty certain that n!+n was the magic number, but having consulted with various people and internets, I realized that I had been only working out the number of permutions for a single-slotted outcome, (ie. how many ways can you say either "knowns," or "unknowns"), and since I was dealing with a double slotter, I probably should have accounted for the two slots by making it n!+n!. Right? Who knows. Probably no-one. That's the great thing about both mathematics and evangelical christianity, you can get it to say anything that fits your need for the moment, and there is no way to know the real answer. Is that how it goes? I forget. I am literally getting a headache from this.

Anyway, now the bigger quesion for me is how in the hell did 0! end up being 1?

Damn you Rumsfeld!