Okay, I have succumb to my curiosity: Because this turned out to be a good example of our motto (TIMTOWTDI) ... I had to do a benchmark with all the possibilities
use strict;
use Benchmark;

timethese(1000000, {
    'p1' => sub { p1( 50, 5) },
    'p2' => sub { p2( 50, 5) },
    'p3' => sub { p3( 50, 5) },
    'p4' => sub { p4( 50, 5) },
    'p5' => sub { p5( 50, 5) },
    'p6' => sub { p6( 50, 5) },
    'p7' => sub { p7( 50, 5) },
});

#chromatic
sub p1
{
    my $probability = 1;
    my ($number, $times) = @_;

    while ($times-- > 0) {
            $probability *= $number;
            $number--;
    }
    return $probability;
 }

#btrott
sub p2
{
    my($number, $times, $prob) = (@_, 1);
           $prob *= $number-- while $times--;
           $prob;
}

#perlmonkey
sub p3
{
    my $number = shift;
    my $count = shift || return 1;
    return $number * p3($number-1,$count-1);
}

#perlmonkey
sub p4
{
     return $_[1] ? $_[0] * p4($_[0]-1,$_[1]-1) : 1;
}

#chromatic
sub p5
{
    my ($prob, $start) = (1, shift);
    $prob *= $start-- foreach (1 .. $_[0]);
    $prob;
}

#chromatic
sub p6
{
    my $prob = 1;
    $prob *= $_ foreach ((($_[0]+1) - $_[1]) .. $_[0]);
    return $prob;
}
  
#chromatic
sub p7 
{
    my $prob = 1;
    return (map { $prob *= $_ } (($_[0] - $_[1] + 1) .. $_[0]))[-1];
}

[download]
And the results:
Benchmark: timing 1000000 iterations of p1, p2, p3, p4, p5, p6, p7...
        p1: 61 wallclock secs (45.42 usr +  0.16 sys = 45.58 CPU)
        p2: 45 wallclock secs (35.92 usr +  0.11 sys = 36.03 CPU)
        p3: 127 wallclock secs (102.34 usr +  0.31 sys = 102.65 CPU)
        p4: 90 wallclock secs (71.84 usr +  0.31 sys = 72.15 CPU)
        p5: 58 wallclock secs (46.11 usr +  0.14 sys = 46.25 CPU)
        p6: 55 wallclock secs (43.51 usr +  0.15 sys = 43.66 CPU)
        p7: 85 wallclock secs (68.11 usr +  0.22 sys = 68.33 CPU)

[download]
And the winner is ... btrott with the slimmed down version from chromatic.
And the loser is... me as I suspected, recursion is slow.

In reply to Re: New Jersey Lottery Probability by perlmonkey
in thread New Jersey Lottery Probability by ergowolf

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