While Pascal’s Triangle was named after the French Mathematician Blaise Pascal, he was

not the first to discover it. Chinese mathematician Jia Xian made a triangular model of

coefficients in the 11th century. The triangle was further studied by another Chinese

mathematician named Yang Hui in the 13th century, making its Chinese name, the Yang Hui

triangle. The patterns of the coefficients were also studied in the 11th century by Persian

mathematician, poet, and astronomer, Omar Khayyam. In Persia, the triangle was known as the

Khayyam triangle. The most commonly known name of the triangle comes from Blaise Pascal, a

French mathematician and physicist, born June 19, 1623. In 1665, Pascal officially published the

Treatise on the Arithmetic Triangle. This work was dedicated solely to the triangle and its

patterns. Although Pascal did not discover the triangle, he is still the most common name

associated with it due to his discoveries of many of its patterns and properties.

Pascal's triangle is a number pyramid where every number is the sum of the two numbers

above it. It’s created with a very simple pattern, however, it has many complex patterns and

properties, which is what has captured the attention of mathematicians around the world. The

triangle will go on forever if you continue adding new cells to the bottom. Pascal's triangle is

symmetric and each number on the left side would match the numbers on the right side. It starts

with a single one at the very top, then at each new row, a number one is placed on either side,

filling in the middle numbers by adding the two numbers above it together.

There are countless sequences in Pascal’s triangle, some of which are easy to see, while

others are harder. The first diagonal is made up entirely of ones. The second diagonal is the

counting numbers or integers (ex. 1, 2, 3, 4). The numbers in the third diagonal are triangular

numbers (ex. 1, 3, 6, 10). Triangular numbers count objects that are arranged in an equilateral

triangle. For example, six is a triangular number because the first row has one dot, the second
row has two, and the third has three. If you add these together, there are six dots, making it a

triangular number. The fourth diagonal includes the tetrahedral numbers (ex. 1, 4, 10, 20). A

tetrahedral is a pyramid with a triangular base and three sides. The xᵗʰ tetrahedral number can be

found by adding up the first x triangular numbers. For example, the fifth tetrahedral number can

be found by adding 1, 3, 6, 10, and 15, which would equal 35.

The triangle’s horizontal sums (ex. 1, 2, 4, 8) are all powers of two, meaning they start at

1 and double for each row. This is because every number in the row before is used twice to make

the next row. Every number in a row with a prime number in the second diagonal, will all be

multiples of that number (ex. 13, 78, 285, 715). If you treat each line as a number, they will all

be exponents of eleven. For example, the first row would be 1 which is equal to 11⁰, the second

row would be 11 equalling 11¹, the third row would be 121 or 11², and so on. If you draw

parallel lines over the shallow diagonals of the triangle and add them together, you will be

presented with the Fibonacci Numbers (ex. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5).

There is an infinite number of ones, a single two, and at least two of every other number.

Although every number appears at least twice, there are some numbers in the middle, like 120

and 3003, which will appear four or six times. Because 3003 is a triangle number it will appear

two more times in the third diagonal of each side of the triangle, making it have 8 total

appearances. There is no proven fixed limit on how often a number can appear in the triangle but

it was hypothesized by an American mathematician, David Singmaster. Every pattern in the

triangle has a mathematical explanation for how and why it occurs.

One thing about the triangle that is less noticeable by just looking at it is that if you

highlight all the even numbers, they will form a set of smaller triangles fitting inside of the

bigger triangle. This also works if you highlight the numbers divisible by 2, 3, 4, or 5, they will
always form an array of triangles. Highlighting the numbers divisible by either two or three will

eventually lead to the formation of something called the Sierpinski Triangle. The Sierpinski

Triangle is a simple pattern that continues to get smaller as it goes, making this shape a fractal.

Pascal’s Triangle also provides an infinite guide to the coefficients in binomial

expansion. It can help to verify that any binomial expansion of a polynomial is correct. To

correctly expand the binomial theorem, you have to consider the row with a single 1 in it as the

0ᵗʰ row. If you look at the second row, you can see the numbers 1, 2, and 1, which match with the

coefficients in (a+b)², (the row number will correspond to the exponent number). The extended

version of the binomial would be 1x²+2xy+1², which as you can see matches with the order of

numbers in the 2nd row.

Pascal’s Triangle is widely used in probability theory, combinatorics, and algebra. It is

also well known for its role in finding coefficients in binomial expressions and calculating the

probability of heads and tails in a coin toss.

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