Guided Notes: Pascal’s Triangle PowerPoint

Please complete these notes during today’s lecture.

This will be your exit ticket from class today.

How fast can you expand this binomial!?

(𝒙 + 𝒚)𝟗

What is the Pascal’s Triangle?

It is a _____________ __________________ of numbers that is used to obtain the required
result of the expansion of a _______________ in a very _________ and _______________ way.
No need to expand out an expression the long way when you have this little shortcut!
First, let’s look at the _______ of the Pascal Triangle
It is named after a ____________ century mathematician, _______ ________.
However, after some research it has been discovered that the triangle appeared in
mathematics as early as the _________ century by __________ and the ____________.
It is still known as the Pascal Triangle despite this discovery because of Pascals completion of
__________________________________ in 1654.

Constructing the Pascal Triangle

Let’s begin with constructing the triangle so that you understand how we get the numbers
in each of the rows.
It is important to ___________what we are doing so that we are not just ___________.
Memorizing math concepts will not be as _________ as actually _____________the concept
We describe the triangle in terms of _______, starting with row _____.
Each row will always start with a ____ and end with a _______.
PLEASE DRAW YOUR OWN DIAGRAM THAT COINCIDES WITH THIS SLIDE.
(The use of colors would be helpful!)

The zero row of the triangle is

The first row is
You will construct the second row
By adding the components of the
first row together
The third row will continue
The same process of adding the
Components of the previous row
The fourth row

Compare your above diagram to the one provided below.

Take a few moments to study the Pascals Triangle.
Fill out the empty triangle to the best of your abilities. (Try not to look)

With your partner discuss the following question: Do you see any patterns in
the Pascal Triangle.
Write down one that you may have discussed.
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
More Patterns
When we sum the rows, we get the following:
1 = 1 = ____
1+1 = 2 = ____
1+2+1 = 4 = ____
1+3+3+1 = 8 = ____
1+4+6+4+1 = 16 = ____
We can describe this as
2𝑛 where n is the number of the row.
How do we use the Pascal Triangle?
Now that we have learned how to construct the pascal triangle, we now will learn how to apply
it.
Let’s go back to previous example:
(𝒙 + 𝒚)𝟗
We will use the row that corresponds with the number in the exponent.
So, we will be looking at the elements in row _____.
The __________ of the expression will be as follows
1 ____ 36 ____ 126 ____ 84 ______ 9 _____
For each element in the row we will correlate an x and a y value.
We will start with 𝑥 9 y 0 with the first element and each one after we will ____________the
exponent in x by 1 and ________the exponent in y by
(𝑥 + 𝑦)9 = 1𝑥 9 + 9𝑥 8 𝑦 + 36𝑥 7 𝑦 2 + 84𝑥 6 𝑦 3 + 126𝑥 5 𝑦 4 + 126𝑥 4 𝑦 5 + 84𝑥 3 𝑦 6 + 36𝑥 2 𝑦 7
+ 9𝑥𝑦 8 + 1𝑦 9
 ___________________________________
Now it’s your turn to try.
(You may work with a partner, if needed.)

1. (𝑥 + 𝑦)5 =

2. (𝑥 + 𝑦)3 =

3. (𝑥 + 𝑦)7 =

4. (𝑥 + 𝑦)15 =

Watch this short video and please write down 3- 4 main ideas.
1. ________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2. ________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3. ________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4. ________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

What if your n power is greater than 15?

Discuss with a partner the following:
 Would it be easier to write out 15 or more rows of a pascal triangle?
 Do you think there is another way that we would be able to compute an expression with
the exponent “n” greater than 15?