Knowledge Article: Probability and Statistics

Making Predictions Based on Probabilities

Pascal’s Triangle and Binomial Calculations
Pascal’s triangle is named after the seventeenth-century French mathematician Blaise
Pascal. The triangle and its properties, however, were discovered long before Pascal
introduced it to the Western world.

Notice how Pascal’s triangle is formed by placing 1 at the top, or apex, of the triangle.
This is the zeroth row. Every number in the triangle is the sum of the two numbers
diagonally above it. The outermost diagonals to the left and right are all filled with 1s.

You’ll recall that a binomial is a

polynomial consisting of two terms, or two
monomials. Both terms can be variables
with or without numerical coefficients, or
one term can be a variable and the other
term a constant. (If both terms were
constants, they would be simplified into a
monomial.) These are all binomials:
x+y
2x + 4y
8x + 2
6 + 3y
x2 + 4y4

Look at these expanded forms of the binomial (x + y) raised to different powers, starting
from 0:
(x + y)0 = 1
(x + y)1 = x + y
(x + y)2 = x2 + 2xy + y2
(x + y)3 = x3 + 3x2y + 3xy2 + y3

Compare these expanded forms with the numbers in each row of Pascal’s triangle. Can
you see a common pattern?

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Using Pascal’s triangle and the pattern we’ve seen in the exponents of the terms in the
expanded form of a binomial, let’s expand the binomial (x + 6.3)4. Note that here 6.3 is
actually the y value.

The binomial is raised to the power 4, so we’ll find the coefficients of its expanded form
in row 4 of Pascal’s triangle: 1, 4, 6, 4, 1.

The highest power to which both terms will be raised in the expanded form is 4. We also
know that from left to right, the exponents of the x term will decrease and the powers of
the constant 6.3 will increase: x4(6.3)0 + 4x3(6.3)1 + 6x2(6.3)2 + 4x1(6.3)3 + x0(6.3)4.

Simplifying each term, we get (x + 6.3)4 = x4 + 25.2x3 + 238.14x2 + 1,000.19x + 1,575.3.

To expand any binomial raised to the power n, the coefficients of the expanded form will
correspond to row n of Pascal’s triangle. For example, the coefficients of (x + y)7
correspond to row 7 of the triangle.

In the expanded form, the exponents of the first term (x) will decrease from n to 0, and
the exponents of the second term (y) will increase from 0 to n from left to right.

Binomial Coefficients
Pascal’s triangle offers us a simple way of expanding binomials, but we can use it
conveniently only if the exponent is small. For larger exponents, we would have to
expand the triangle to match the magnitude of the exponent. For example, if you wanted
to find the expanded form of (x + y)20, you would have to expand the triangle to 20 rows,
which is tedious and time consuming. In such cases, we use a formula to find the
coefficients of the binomial expansion.

For any binomial raised to the power n, the coefficient of the (r + 1)th term is given

n ,
by the expression r where r is a whole number such that 0 ≤ r ≤ n. The
2
 n n!
expression is known as the binomial coefficient and is evaluated as r
.
r ! (n r )!

This coefficient is essentially the combination formula for the number of ways you can
get a result. For example, with two tosses of a coin, there are two ways you can get a
result of one head:
2!
= 2.
1! ( 2 1)!

Order doesn’t matter, so a head and a tail or a tail and a head are the same, and they
form the two ways to get one head.

Recall that n! (read as “n factorial”) is the product of all positive numbers less than or
equal to n. Also recall that 1! = 1 and 0! = 1.

Let’s use the binomial coefficient formula to find the coefficients of (x + y)5. Here,
n = 5, the number of coefficients will be n + 1 = 6, and the values of r will range from 0
to 5:

5! 5!
Coefficient 1: 5 1 (Note that 0! is defined as 1.)
0 0! (5 0)! 1 5!

5! 5!
Coefficient 2: 5 5
1 1! (5 1)! 1 4!

5! 5!
Coefficient 3: 5 10
2 2! (5 2)! 2! 3!

5! 5!
Coefficient 4: 5 10
3 3! (5 3)! 3! 2!

5! 5!
Coefficient 5: 5 5
4 4! (5 4)! 4! 1!

5! 5!
Coefficient 6: 5 1
5 5! (5 5)! 5! 0!

The coefficients of a binomial raised to the power 5 will be 1, 5, 10, 10, 5, and 1. You
can verify that these coefficients match the numbers in row 5 of Pascal’s triangle.

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The Binomial Theorem
Combining the pattern we observed in the exponents of the expanded form and the
binomial coefficient formula, we can state the binomial theorem.

For any binomial (x + y) raised to the power n,

n n 0 n (n – 1) 1 n n 0 n
(x + y)n = x y + x y + + x1 y(n – 1) + x y.
0 1 n 1 n

We can write the theorem in summation notation as

n
(x + y)n = n xn r y r .
r 0
r

You can use this theorem to expand a binomial raised to any power. The exponent of
the first term decreases from n to 0 and the exponent of the second term increases from
0 to n as we move from left to right.

Let’s use the binomial theorem to expand the binomial (x + y)6:

n n n n
(x + y)n = xn y0 + x(n – 1) y1 + + x1 y(n – 1) + x0 yn
0 1 n 1 n

6 6 6 6 6
(x + y)6 = x6y0 + x(6 – 1)y1 + x(6 – 2)y2 + x(6 – 3)y3 + x(6 – 4)y4
0 1 2 3 4
6 6
+ x(6 – 5)y5 + x(6 – 6)y6
5 6

6! 6 6! 5 6! 4 2 6! 3 3 6! 2 4 6! 6! 6
(x + y)6 = x + x y+ xy + xy + xy + xy5 + y
0!6! 1!5! 2!4! 3!3! 4!2! 5!1! 6!0!

(x + y)6 = 1x6 + 6x5y + 15x4y2 + 20x3y3 + 15x2y4 + 6xy5 + 1y6

(x + y)6 = x6 + 6x5y + 15x4y2 + 20x3y3 + 15x2y4 + 6xy5 + y6

Finding a specific term in the expanded form of a binomial requires knowing some
properties of an expanded form. Consider (x + y)3 = x3 + 3x2y + 3xy2 + y3.

Note that the expanded form of this binomial raised to the power 3 has four terms. In
general, the expansion of (x + y)n will have n + 1 terms. Recall that (x + y)0 has one
term, (x + y)1 has two terms, and so on.

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Another essential property is the value of r for a particular coefficient. The binomial
n
coefficient for the first term begins with r = 0. So, the binomial coefficient at r gives
r
the value of the (r + 1)th coefficient. For example, the fourth term of a binomial raised to
3
the power 3 will have a binomial coefficient defined by , where n = 3 and
3
r = 4 – 1 = 3.

For any binomial (x + y) raised to the power n, the (r + 1)th term is given by
n
x (n – r) yr.
r

Probabilities in Binomial Situations

Many situations involve two outcomes: true or false, boy or girl, for or against, on or off,
win or lose, and so on. One of the two outcomes can be labeled success and the other
failure. For example, for a campaign to defeat a proposed amendment to a state
constitution, all no votes would be considered successes and yes votes would be
considered failures. The words success and failure are somewhat arbitrary: they might
be switched depending on the perspective of the scenario. In other situations, there may
be more than two possible outcomes, but if we are looking for only one aspect of those
outcomes, then all others are deemed failures. This could happen in an election in
which three candidates are running, but we are interested in the success or failure of
only one of them.

A situation is called binomial if these conditions apply:

There are two possible outcomes.
Each trial is independent of the other trials (called success or failure).
The outcomes have the same probability with each trial.
A given number of trials are requested.

A coin toss has two possible outcomes: heads and tails. Each outcome has a fixed
probability, that is, it is the same from trial to trial. In the case of a fair coin toss, heads
1
and tails each have the same probability of . Even if the coin toss is not fair, meaning
2
that heads or tails has a greater probability than the other, from trial to trial their
probabilities would remain consistent, so this is still a binomial situation. Any distribution
that has the four properties listed for a binomial situation is called a binomial distribution.
For now, we will consider probability distributions with just two possible outcomes that
have equal probabilities and that add up to 1.

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A Simple Example
Outcome First Flip Second Flip The four possible outcomes that could
1 heads heads occur if you flipped a coin twice are listed
in table 1. Note that the four outcomes are
2 heads tails
equally likely: each has probability
3 tails heads 1 1 1
4 tails tails . To see this, note that the
2 2 4
Table 1. four possible outcomes tosses of the coin are independent (none
affects the others).

Hence, if P(H)= the probability of a head, the probability of a head on flip 1 and a head
1 1 1
on flip 2 is the product of P(H) and P(H), which is . The same calculation
2 2 4
applies to the probability of a head on the first flip and a tail on the second flip. Each is
1 1 1 1
, so their combined probability is .
2 2 2 4

The four possible outcomes can be classified by the number of heads that come up.
The number could be two (outcome 1), one (outcomes 2 and 3) or 0 (outcome 4).

Number of Heads Probability The probabilities of these possibilities are

1 shown in table 2. Since two of the
0 outcomes represent the case in which just
4
one head appears in the two tosses, the
1
1 probability of this event is equal to
2 1 1 1
1 .
2 4 4 2
4
Table 2. probabilities of 0, 1, or 2 heads

The Formula for Binomial Probabilities

The binomial distribution consists of the probabilities of each of the possible numbers of
successes (r) on n trials for independent events that each have a probability of p of
occurring. For the coin flip example, n = 2 and the p of heads or tails = 0.5. The
formula for the binomial distribution is
n r
p (1 – p)(n – r),
r
where P(r) is the probability of r successes out of n trials, n is the number of trials, and p
is the probability of success on a given trial.

Let’s apply this to tour coin flip example. If you flip a coin twice, what is the probability of
getting one or more heads? Since the probability of getting exactly one head is 0.50 and
the probability of getting exactly two heads is 0.25, the probability of getting one or more
heads is 0.50 + 0.25 = 0.75.
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Now suppose that the coin is biased. The probability of heads is only 0.4. What is the
probability of getting heads at least once in two tosses? Substituting into our general
formula above, we get this result:
2 2
0.41 0.6(2-1) + 0.42 0.6(2-2) = 0.64
1 2

Cumulative Probabilities
We toss a coin 12 times. What is the probability that we get from 0 to 3 heads? The
answer is found by computing the probability of exactly 0 heads, exactly 1 head, exactly
2 heads, and exactly 3 heads. The probability of getting from 0 to 3 heads is then the
sum of these probabilities. The rounded probabilities are: 0.0002, 0.0029, 0.0161, and
0.0537. The sum of the probabilities is 0.073. The calculation of cumulative binomial
probabilities can be quite tedious. To do it for no heads in 12 flips:
12
P(0) = 50 5(12-0) = 0.000244.
0
But you would also have to repeat this process for 1 head, 2 heads, and 3 heads. It’s
usually more practical and common to use a binomial calculator to determine these
probabilities.

This knowledge article is adapted from the following sources:

Illowsky, Barbara, and Susan Dean. “Collaborative Statistics.” Connexions. June 22, 2011.

Lane, David M., Project Leader, Rice University. Online Statistics Education: A Multimedia
Course of Study.