Pascal's Triangle

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Pascal's triangle is a number triangle with numbers arranged in staggered rows such
that
(1)

where is a binomial coefficient. The triangle was studied by B. Pascal, in whose

posthumous work it appeared in 1665 (Pascal 1665). However, it had been previously
investigated my many other mathematicians, including Italian algebraist Niccolò
Tartaglia, who published the first six rows of the triangle in 1556. It was also described
centuries earlier by Chinese mathematician Yang Hui and the Persian astronomer-poet
Omar Khayyám. As a result, it is known as the Yang Hui triangle in China, the Khayyam
triangle in Persia, and Tartaglia's triangle in Italy.
Starting with , the triangle is

(2)

(OEIS A007318). Pascal's formula shows that each subsequent row is obtained by
adding the two entries diagonally above,
(3)

The plot above shows the binary representations for the first 255 (top figure) and 511
(bottom figure) terms of a flattened Pascal's triangle.
The first number after the 1 in each row divides all other numbers in that row iff it is
a prime.
The sums of the number of odd entries in the first rows of Pascal's triangle
for , 1, ... are 0, 1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 15, 19, 27, 29, 33, 37, 45, 49, ...
(OEIS A006046). It is then true that
(4)

(Harborth 1976, Le Lionnais 1983), with equality for a power of 2, and the power

of given by the constant

(5)

(OEIS A020857). The sequence of cumulative counts of odd entries has some amazing
properties, and the minimum possible value (OEIS A077464) is known
as the Stolarsky-Harborth constant.
Pascal's triangle contains the figurate numbers along its diagonals, as can be seen from
the identity

(6)

(7)

In addition, the sum of the elements of the th row is

(8)

so the sum of the first rows (i.e., rows 0 to ) is the Mersenne number