Pascal's Triangle

Considering how amazing and neat Pascal's triangle is, I thought it would be nice to have some background on the mastermind that discovered this incredible tool. Blaise Pascal was born in 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, France. Pascal was not only a mathematician, but also a physicist, inventor, and writer. Pascal was a child prodigy, and is known not only for his triangle, but also for "Pascal's Wager."

For more information on Pascal you can visit the following site:

http://www.biography.com/people/blaise-pascal-9434176

Pascal's Triangle is one of the most helpful and neat tools in math. In math class this far, we have learned that Pascal's triangle is formed by adding the two numbers above them to the left and right. Additionally, we have found Pascal's triangle to be extremely helpful with our expansions. Pascal's triangle has many neat little tricks to it. For example, if you add all of the numbers in each row together, it is equal to a power of 2 (2^3= 1=3=3=1=8). Additionally, if a row starts with a prime number that is not one (every row begins with 1), each number in that row is divisible by that number. The Fibonacci sequence can also be found in Pascal's triangle by adding the numbers in their diagonal rows consecutively. Doing this will give you the Fibonacci sequence.  Lastly, a cool trick of Pascal's triangle, is that if you take the sums of the rows horizontally, up until row 5, it will be equal to 11^n power, where n= the row number that you are in. It is important to note that the very first row is row 0, NOT row 1. With this pattern, when you arrive at row 6, the trick still works, but you have to do a little bit of different addition to get the same answer.