The Millennium School, Indore

Mathematics
Investigatory Project
Pascal’s Triangle

Class XII A

Session: 2019-20

Submitted To – Mr. Montoo Gupta

Submitted By – Ms. Tanya Singh

 Contents
1.Certificate
2.Acknowledgement
3.Blaise Pascal and his Contributions
4.Pascal’s Triangle
5.Patterns Within
6.Symmetry
7.Power of 11
8.Perfect Squares
9.The Fiboacci Series
10. Sierpinski Triangle
11. Combinatronics
12. The Binomial Theorm
13. The Quincunx
14. Bibliography
Pascal’s Triangle
 Certificate
This is certified to be the bona fide work of
Tanya Singh in the Class XII, Roll No. 14,
School The Millennium School during the
academic year 2019-20.

…………………….
Teacher In-charge

………………….. …………………….
Examiner’s Signature Principal

Date : …………………..

Pascal’s Triangle
 Acknowledgement
I express my deepest gratitude to our Principal
Mrs. Sangeeta Uppal for her valuable guidance
and also for providing students with an environment
to complete our projects successfully.

I am deeply indebted to our teacher Mr. Montoo

Gupta for his unwavering support, both
academically and morally during the entire course
of project work.

I take this opportunity to extend my deep

appreciation also to my family and friends who
helped me a lot in finalizing this project within the
limited time frame and for all the motivation and
inspiration. Thank You.

Pascal’s Triangle
Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was

French mathematician, physicist, inventor,

writer and Catholic theologian. He was a child

prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax

collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was

in the natural and applied sciences where he

made important contributions to the study

of fluids, and clarified the concepts

of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the

work of Evangelista Torricelli.

Pascal’s Triangle
Pascal was an important mathematician,

helping create two major new areas of

research: he wrote a significant treatise on

the subject of projective geometry at the age

of 16, and later corresponded with Pierre de

Fermat on probability theory, strongly

influencing the development of modern

economics and social science.

Pascal’s Triangle
Following Galileo Galilei and Torricelli, in

1647, he rebutted Aristotle's followers who

insisted that nature abhors a vacuum.

Pascal's results caused many disputes before

being accepted.

Pascal’s Contributions

Blaise Pascal lived in 17th-century France

and made several contributions to the fields of

mathematics, physics, and philosophy. He is

known for laying the foundation for today's

probability theory, for his work in barometric

pressure, and for his theological writings.

Pascal’s Triangle
Blaise Pascal made contributions to

mathematics, physics, and philosophy. In

mathematics, you might recognize his name

in Pascal's triangle. The numbers that form

Pascal's triangle are binomial coefficients.

Each number is the sum of the two numbers

above it. The tip of the triangle and the sides

are all ones. The numbers forming the body of

the triangle are the addition of the two

immediately above. For example, the middle

number in the third row is the addition of the

two numbers from the second row.

Pascal’s Triangle
Pascal presented this information in written

form in 1653.

Pascal laid the foundation for probability

theory. He was inspired by his desire to help

a friend who had some questions about

gambling. He realized that events don't

happen randomly, but actually depend on

what happened just before the event. In other

words, if you had a box of blue and red balls,

and you had already taken a blue ball out, the

probability of taking a red ball out now will

have changed.

Pascal’s Triangle
In 1646, Blaise Pascal experimented with

atmospheric pressure and discovered that

vacuums exist in the real world. He also

found that atmospheric pressure can be

measured using real weights. After a

conversion experience, Blaise Pascal fully

converted to Jansenism and wrote

the Provincial Letters in which he defended

Jansenism and its leading philosopher

against the Jesuits.

Pascal’s Triangle
Pascal’s Triangle

In mathematics, Pascal's triangle is

a triangular array of the binomial coefficients.

In much of the Western world, it is named after

the French mathematician Blaise Pascal,

although other mathematicians studied it

centuries before him in India,

Persia (Iran), China, Germany, and Italy. The

rows of Pascal's triangle are conventionally

enumerated starting with row n = 0 at the top

(the 0th row).

Pascal’s Triangle
The entries in each row are numbered from

the left beginning with k = 0 and are usually

staggered relative to the numbers in the

adjacent rows.

Each number is the numbers directly above

it added together.

Pascal’s Triangle
The triangle may be constructed in the

following manner: In row 0 (the topmost row),

there is a unique nonzero entry 1. Each entry

of each subsequent row is constructed by

adding the number above and to the left with

the number above and to the right, treating

blank entries as 0. For example, the initial

number in the first (or any other) row is 1 (the

sum of 0 and 1), whereas the numbers 1 and

3 in the third row are added to produce the

number 4 in the fourth row.

Pascal’s Triangle
Properties of Pascal’s Triangle:

Symmetrical

The numbers on the left side have identical

matching numbers on the right side, like a

mirror image.

Pascal’s Triangle
The first two columns aren’t too interesting,

they’re just the ones and the natural

numbers.

The next column is the triangular

numbers. You can think of the triangular

numbers as the number of dots it takes to

make various sized triangles.

Similarly the fourth column is the tetrahedral

numbers, or triangular pyramidal numbers. As

their name suggests they represent the

number of dots needed to make pyramids with

triangle bases.

Pascal’s Triangle
The columns continue in this way, describing

the “simplices” which are just extrapolations of

this triangle/tetrahedron idea to arbitrary

dimensions. The next column is the 5-simplex

numbers, followed by the 6-simplex numbers

and so on.

Horizontal Sums

The horizontal sums in the triangle double

each time i.e with the power of 2.

Pascal’s Triangle
Powers of 11

The triangle also reveals powers of base 11.

This can be done by squishing the numbers in

each row together. Which is easy enough for

the first 5 rows. for the double digits, on

carrying the tens place over to the number on

its left, a unique sequence is revealed.

Pascal’s Triangle
Perfect Sources

We can locate the perfect squares of the

natural numbers in column 2 by summing the

number to the right with the number below the

number to the right.

For example,

 2² → 1+3=4

 3² → 3+6

 4² → 6+10=16

Pascal’s Triangle
The Fibonacci sequence

To uncover the hidden Fibonacci

Sequence sum the diagonals of the left-

justified Pascal Triangle.

When we make a pattern by going up and

then along, then add up the values

Pascal’s Triangle
We will get the Fibonacci sequence .

The Fibonacci Sequence starts "0, 1" and

then continues by adding the two previous

numbers, for example 3+5=8, then 5+8=13

etc.

Pascal’s Triangle
Sierpinski Triangle

Using the original orientation of Pascal’s

Triangle, shade in all the odd numbers and

you’ll get a picture that looks similar to the

famous fractal Sierpinski Triangle.

If you color the odd and even numbered

boxes, the latter will be obtained.

Pascal’s Triangle
Combinatorics

Perhaps the most interesting relationship found

in Pascal’s Triangle is how we can use it to find

the combinatorial numbers.

Recall the combinatorics formula n choose k (if

you’re blanking on what I’m talking about

check out this post for a review).

Pascal’s Triangle
We find that in each row of Pascal’s

Triangle n is the row number and k is the

entry in that row, when counting from zero.

Pascal’s Triangle
Expanding Binomials

Suppose you have the binomial (x + y) and

you want to raise it to a power such as 2 or 3.

Normally you’d need to go through the long

process of multiplying, but with Pascal’s

Triangle you can avoid the hassle and skip to

the answer

Pascal’s Triangle
For example, let’s expand (x+y)³.

Since we’re raising (x+y) to the 3rd power,

use the values in the fourth row of Pascal’s

as the coefficients of your expansion. Then

fill in the x and y terms as outlined below.

Pascal’s Triangle
Binomial Theorem

Multiplying powers of (x+y) is cool, but how

often do we come across the need to solve

that exact problem? Probably, not too often.

Wouldn’t it be handy if we could generalize the

idea from the last section into a more usable

form?

Well, turns out that’s the Binomial Theorem:

Pascal’s Triangle
It’s similar to what we did in the last section.

The best way to understand any formula is to

work an example.Let’s try (2x–3)³.

Let x from our formula be the first term

and y be the second. Then x=2x, y=–3,

n=3 and k is the integers from 0 to n=3, in this

case k={0, 1, 2, 3}.

First I’ll fill in the formula using all the above

values except k:

Pascal’s Triangle
It still looks a little strange, but we’re getting

closer.

Next fill in the values for k. Recall that k has

4 values, so we need to fill out 4 different

versions and add them together.

Finish multiplying and simplifying:

Pascal’s Triangle
The Quincunx

An amazing little machine created by Sir

Francis Galton is a Pascal's Triangle made

out of pegs. It is called The Quincunx .

Balls are dropped onto the first peg and

then bounce down to the bottom of the

triangle where they collect in little bins.

Pascal’s Triangle
At first it looks completely random (and it is),

but then you find the balls pile up in a nice

pattern: the Normal Distribution.

Pascal’s Triangle
 Bibliography

 http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.pas

cal.triangle.html

 https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/pascal-

triangle/

 https://medium.com/i-math/top-10-

secrets-of-pascals-triangle-6012ba9c5e23

 https://www.mathsisfun.com/pascals-

triangle.html

Pascal’s Triangle
Pascal’s Triangle