Pas- cal’s Triangle

Pas- cal’s triangle is a pattern of numbers, named after French

mathematician Blaise Pascal. Ones line the outside of the tri-
angle and each number is the sum of the two numbers above
it. The triangle is symmetrical down the centre and the
sum of the row doubles each time we move a row down
the triangle.

The trian- gle is

useful as it can
be used to show the probability of any combination. Of
course, this means that it can be used to show the proba-
bility of any combination of objects.

The formula for working out the value at any

place in Pascal’s triangle is as follows:
This is simply called “n choose k”, where n is
The row and k is the term on that row.
(ie if it was the third term on the
fourth row, n would be equal to 4, and k
would be equal to 3.
As we can see illustrated on the right, simply
expanding these brackets would take an ob-
scene amount of time, so the formula
signifi- cantly reduces the time it takes
to work out the expanded versions of
the brack- ets, yet once the first half
has been worked out, due to
the sym- metry of the trian-
gle, the second
half is identical
to the first, except with
the powers being applied to “a” instead of “b” and vice versa. The powers always add up to the
power outside of the initial bracket.