Vinculum Above a Power

Question

So I recently learned the answer to a question I had. I was linked this page here

So this is exactly the answer to my question, but I noticed the line above the exponent and I read online that it is called a vinculum, which is something I had never heard of before. How does a vinculum affect an exponent and how can I input this function into a calculator if at all?

Answer 1

That is notation for the rising factorial, defined on the wikipedia page you are reading. It's pretty specialized notation, likely to be rccognized only by mathematicians who work in combinatorics. That's why it's defined on the page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_and_rising_factorials#Alternate_notations

I doubt that there are calculators that know about it.

Answer 2

It's used in the Wikipedia article to denote the rising factorial. See also here.