Generating binomial coefficients in a row of Pascal's triangle from extensions of powers of eleven

Heliyon. 2022 Nov 11;8(11):e11651. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e11651. eCollection 2022 Nov.

Abstract

Sir Isaac Newton noticed that the values of the first five rows of Pascal's triangle are each formed by a power of 11, and claimed that subsequent rows can also be generated by a power of 11. Literally, the claim is not true for the 5 t h row and onward. His genius mind might have suggested a deep relation between binomial coefficients and a power of some integer that resembles the number 11 in some form. In this study, we propose and prove a general formula to generate the values in any row of Pascal's triangle from the digits of ( 1 0 0 Θ zeros 1 ) n . It can be shown that the numbers in the cells in n t h row of Pascal's triangle may be achieved from Θ + 1 partitions of the digits of the number ( 1 0 0 Θ zeros 1 ) n , where Θ is a non-negative integer. That is, we may generate the number in the cells in a row of Pascal's triangle from a power of 11, 101, 1001, or 10001 and so on. We briefly discuss how to determine the number of zeros Θ in relation to n, and then empirically show that the partition really gives us binomial coefficients for several values of n. We provide a formula for Θ and prove that the ( n + 1 ) t h row of Pascal's triangle is simply Θ + 1 partitions of the digits of ( 1 0 0 Θ zeros 1 ) n from the right.

Keywords: Binomial coefficients; Logarithm; Modular arithmetic; Pascal's triangle.