Honouring a Great Teacher

Friedrich Engels was born on November 28, 1820. In his honour, let's think about how often the number 1820 appears in Pascal's triangle. How many of the statements below are true?

(A) 1820 never appears

(B) 1820 appears infinitely many times

(C) 1820 appears an even number of times

(D) 1820 appears at least 4 times

Bonus question: How many positive integers n > 1 n>1 appear at least six times in Pascal's triangle?


The answer is 2.

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

Arjen Vreugdenhil
Jun 18, 2016

Row n n of Pascal's triangle has the form 1 n n 1 1\ \ n\ \ \dots\ \ n\ \ 1 where \dots consists of numbers greater than n n . This proves, first of all, that n > 1 n > 1 occurs at least twice, and second, that n n cannot occur more than a finite number of times.

Now 1820 = 13 7 5 2 2 = 2 5 14 13 1820 = 13 \cdot 7 \cdot 5 \cdot 2^2 = 2 \cdot 5 \cdot 14 \cdot 13 . This invites us to try

1820 4 ! = 2 ( 2 3 3 ) 5 14 13 = 16 15 14 13. 1820 \cdot 4! = 2 \cdot (2^3 \cdot 3) \cdot 5 \cdot 14 \cdot 13 = 16\cdot 15 \cdot 14 \cdot 13.

This shows that 1820 = ( 16 4 ) . 1820 = \left(\begin{array}{c} 16 \\ 4 \end{array}\right).

We see that 1820 occurs at least four times: twice in row 1820, and twice in row 16.

Finally, symmetry shows that the number of occurrences is odd unless ( 2 n n ) = 1820 \left(\begin{array}{c} 2n \\ n \end{array}\right) = 1820 . But this is not the case, since ( 14 7 ) = 3432 > 1820 \left(\begin{array}{c} 14 \\ 7 \end{array}\right) = 3432 > 1820 .

Thus C and D are true and we submit the answer 2 \boxed{2} .

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...