Introduction

Pascal’s The triangle is a three-sided polygon, consists of three angle that

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adds up to 180 degrees. It is one of the world’s most common
shapes. As the world’s strongest shape
it has been used in nearly everything

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that you could think of areas such as
music instruments, bridges, building,
transportations, foods, symbols, sport

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equipment etc. But there is also a type
of triangle that is purely made out of
numbers that consists many patterns

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and mysteries around itself. It’s called
Pascal’s triangle, named after the
French Mathematician Blaise Pascal in
the 17th century. Well, technically
pascal is not the first person who observed this number pattern. As early
as 953-1029 CE, The Persian mathematician Al-Karaji has published a
book that gives a basic description of binomial coefficient and the triangle pattern itself. In China, the
mathematician Yang Hui has found the pattern of the pascal’s triangle in 13 th century and has
represented it as a diagram. Therefore, in China, the pascal’s triangle is also referred to Yang Hui’s
triangle. In India, as early as 3rd century BCE, a scholar called Pingala has found out about triangular
array of numbers, which can be considered as an early version of pascal’s triangle. The top row of
Pascal’s triangle starts with the number, 1. Add it with two 0s next to the 1 you get 1,1 as the second
row of triangle. Continue the pattern, 1+0=1, 1+1=2, 1+0=1, you get 1,2,1 as the third row, therefore
the pattern of the triangle number continues.

Investigation
Pascal’s triangle has many different functions and purpose. That can be used to help mathematicians.
Such as binomial expansion. Pascal’s triangle has infinite rows. Very top row, consists only one
number, 1, is know as row 0. The second row consists of two 1s and has been known as row 2. And
the patterns continue through the Pascal’s triangle. The formula for binomial theorem is (X+Y)^n.
The n in the formula refers to the row in the pascal’s triangle. Take the example
(X+Y)^2 we can expand it as (X+Y)(X+Y) we can expand it as 1X^2+
XY+XY+1Y^2 if we simplifies that we get X^2+2XY+Y^2. The coefficient of this
expression is 1,2,1. Which is the same as the second row of the pascals’ triangle.
Therefore, by using Pascal’s triangle mathematicians can expand
binomial theorems much faster by using the pattern. This
formula works with any binomial expansion no matter
what the n equals to. Another function of the Pascal’s
triangle is to get the power of twos. If you choose a
row in the pascal’s triangle and adds all the number together you will get 2 to
the power of n. In this case, the n represents the row of Pascal’s triangle. If
we look at row six of the Pascal’s triangle, we get the number of 1, 6, 15,
20, 15, 6, 1. By adding them together, the result is 64, which is 2 to the
power of 6. This function of the pascal’s triangle allows
Mathematician to quickly find the power of 2 by adding numbers
together. If we look at Pascal’s triangle diagonally, there are also
discoveries to be found. The First diagonals are all ones, and the second diagonals are just positive
numbers ascending by one. But it the third diagonal row, where everything became interesting. The
patter 1,3,6,10,15,21 are all triangular numbers, which means that any umbers from the third diagonal
row can be stacked into equilateral triangles. You can also find the pattern of the triangular number by
adding the second diagonal rows. For example, if you add the first four umber from the second
diagonal row, 1,2,3,4, you get 10. Which also happens to be the 4th number of the third diagonal row.
The fourth diagonal row is even more complex compared to the third row. It is called the tetrahedral
numbers. Instead of 2D triangles in the third diagonal row, the fourth tetrahedral rows allow numbers
to stack into 3D pyramids. Numbers from the 4th diagonal row, 4,10,20,35 can all be stacked into
equilateral pyramids. Similar to the 3rd diagonal row, the number from the 4th diagonal row can also be
added up by the 3rd diagonal row. If you paint all the prime numbers in the Pascal’s triangle in a
colour, you will get a pattern that looks a bit likes the ‘Tri-force’ symbol in The Legend of Zelda
called the Sierpinski triangle.
A major use of the Pascal’s triangle is when you start to use it in combinations. It is possible to write
the entire Pascal’s triangle in the form of Combinations instead of number. In the combination for of
nCr, the n is the row in pascal’s triangle, and the r represents
the order of the number in the row from left to right minus 1.
For example, if we look at the fourth row of the Pascal’s
triangle and find the second number from left to right, we can
find 4. Use the formula, we can see that n=row, which in this
case is n=4. And since R= the order of the number from left to
right minus 1. And in this example, 4 is the second number,
and 2-1=1. So r=1 then we put all the numbers together, we
get 4C1 which is the same as number 4. This method can be
used in any number in the pascal’s triangle. After knowing
this we can use the Pascal’s triangle to solve combination
problems quicker than ever. For example lets say we have pick 6 marbles from a bag that contains 15
red marble and 15 blue marbles every time you pick up a
marble, one marble that has the same colour as the one
you just picked will be added back to the bag, and you
want to know what is the possibility of getting 4 red
marbles and 2 blue marbles. In binomial expansion, this
problem can de described as (red marbles + blue
marbles)^6. The first step of this question is to find the
6th row of the Pascal’s triangle since there are 6 marbles
you are going to pick from the bag. The numbers in the
6th row are 1, 6, 15, 20, 15, 6, 1. The first 1 in the row
represents the possibility of having 6 red marbles and 0
blue marbles, meanwhile the last 1 in the row represents
the possibility of having 6 blue marbles and 0 red marbles. Since we want to find the possibility of
having 4 red marbles and two blue marbles, we go for the third number in the row since first number
represents 6 red, 0 blue, second represents 5 red, 1 blue and third represents 4 red, 2 blue. Which is
what we need. The third number of rows 6 is 15. Now we add all the numbers of row 6 together,
which is 64, also 2^6. So we use the third number, 15, and divide it by 64, we get 0.234375 which is
approximately 23.4%. So therefore, we know when choosing 6 marbles from a bag of 15 red and 15
blue marbles, that will refill every time. The possibility of having 4 red and 2 blue marble is
approximately 23.4%. You can also solve combinations by using the pascal’s triangle. For example,
to solve the combination 6C4, we simple use the formula nCr. n equals to the role which is 6. r equals
to the order of the number from left to right -1 therefore is 5. So we look at the 5 th number of the 6th
row which is 15. Instead of using the formula n!/(n-k)!k!, which is much more efficient. The formula
nCr(a)^n-r (b)^r can also be used in pascal’s triangle to find the term of a specific binomial expansion.
For example if we want to find the 4th term of the binomial expansion of (2c+3d)^6, we can use the
formula and put 2c as a, 3d as b, ^6 as n and 4 as r. Therefore, we get 6C2 (3y)6-2 (1/y^2)^2.
Therefore, we get 6C4(2c)^2(3d)^4. Further simplify that we have 15(4c^2)(81d^4). And the answer
for this question is 4860c^2d^4. Lastly, the pascal’s triangle is symmetrical. That means that if you
cut the triangle in half vertically the left side of the triangle will always equal to the right side of the
triangle. This is useful because if we know the numbers on the either side of the triangles, we can
work out the other side of the triangle easily by using symmetries. For example we look at the 5 th row
of the Pascal’s triangle, we can see the number 1, 5, 10 on the left side. Use the rule of symmetry, we
can workout that the right side will be 10, 5, 1. Therefore we can know the numbers on the 5 th row of
the Pascal’s triangle is 1,5,10,10,5,1.

Interpretation

I have trouble on expanding binomial theorems as fraction. This is probably because that I have
trouble doing multiplications with fraction since I haven’t done any fractions in a long time. Fraction
has also always been one of my weaknesses in math. In question 17 and question 18 of the mathspace
task I got both of them wrong multiple times and both of them are fractions. I came up with a similar
question to question 17.
Expand (X+1/4)^5 using the binomial theorem.
(x+1/4)^5=1(x)^5(1/4)^0+5(x)^4(1/4)^1+10(x)^3(1/4)^2+10(x)^2(1/4)^3+5(x)^1(1/4)^4+1(x)^0(1/4)^5

=x^5+5x^4*1/4+10x^3*1/16+10x^2*1/64+5x*1/256+1/1024
=x^5+5x^4/4+5x^3/8+5x^2/32+5x/256+1/1024

I also have trouble trying to find the constant term in the mathspace task, since I don’t quite
understand what a constant is. therefore, I got question 29 wrong. After watching some YouTube
videos, I have found a quick way of doing this.
Find the constant term (the term independent of y) in the expansion of (3y-1/y^2)^6
(3y-1/y^2)^6=6Cr(3y)^6-r (1/y^2)^r
6-r-2r=0
6-2r=r
6=3r
2=r
=6C2(3y)^4(1/y^2)^2
=15(3)^4
15*81=1215