Pascal's Triangle fails past row 14 - c++

Question

I have to write a program that outputs Pascal's triangle for a computer science class, and everything is correct on the output until it gets past row 14, wherein it starts outputting odd irrational numbers. Here's my code
#include <iostream>
#include "myFunctions.h"
using namespace std;
int main() {
int rows;
cout << "Please Enter The Number of Rows: ";
cin >> rows;
cout << rows << endl;
for (int i = 0; i < rows; i++) {
for (int j = 1; j < (rows - i + 1); j++) {
cout << " ";
}
for (int k = 0; k <= i; k++) {
if (k == 0) {
cout << "1" << " ";
} else {
cout << combination(i, k) << " ";
}
}
cout << "\n";
}
return 0;
}
And here's my functions file:
#ifndef MYFUNCTIONS_CPP_INCLUDED
#define MYFUNCTIONS_CPP_INCLUDED
#include "myFunctions.h"
double factorial (int n) {
assert(n >= 0);
int v = 1;
while (n > 0) {
v *= n;
n--;
}
return v;
}
double combination (int a, int b) {
return (factorial(a) / (factorial(a - b) * factorial(b)));
}
#endif // MYFUNCTIONS_CPP_INCLUDED
And, finally, here's my header file.
#ifndef MYFUNCTIONS_H_INCLUDED
#define MYFUNCTIONS_H_INCLUDED
#include <iostream>
#include <cassert>
//*******************************************************
// description: finds factorial of value *
// return: double *
// precondition: that the value is valid and an integer *
// postcondition: returns the factorial of value *
//*******************************************************
double factorial( int n );
//********************************************************
// description: finds combination of value *
// return: double *
// precondition: both values are integers and valid *
// postcondition: returns the combination of two values *
//********************************************************
double combination( int a, int b );
#endif // MYFUNCTIONS_H_INCLUDED
I'm assuming that I did the equations within functions incorrect, or something specific is happening in main once it hits 14. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

What's going on
ints in C++ have a maximum size. As mentioned in comments, depends on your platform but for the sake of this question, I'll assume it's 2^31-1 which corresponds to a 32-bit signed integer and is what I most commonly see.
The issue comes in when you get to factorials. They grow very quickly. 14!=87178291200 which is a whole lot bigger than the maximum size of a 32 bit int. There's no feasible way to keep the whole factorial in memory for an arbitrary n! because of how large they can get.
It's not that your code is broken, it's simply running up against the physical bounds of computing.
How can we fix it?
First off, you could cancel out factorials. Basically, since we can guarantee that a>=b, we know that a!/b! is just multiplying the numbers between a and b. We can do that with a loop. Then it's just a matter of dividing by (a-b)!, which we already know how to do. This would look like
int combination(int a, int b)
{
int tmp = 1;
for(int ii = b;ii<=a;ii++)
tmp*=ii;
tmp /= factorial(b);
return tmp;
}
More efficiently, we can switch to a different algorithm. Wikipedia recommends using an iterative method for pascal's triangle. That is, each element can be calculated from two elements in the row above it. As #Damien mentions in comments, if you're looking for the kth element in row n, then you can calculate that by
int Combination(int n,int k)
{
if (k == 0 or k>n or n <= 1)
return 1;
return Combination(n-1,k) + Combination(n-1,k-1);
}