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 appear at least six times in Pascal's triangle?
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Row n of Pascal's triangle has the form 1 n … n 1 where … consists of numbers greater than n . This proves, first of all, that n > 1 occurs at least twice, and second, that n cannot occur more than a finite number of times.
Now 1 8 2 0 = 1 3 ⋅ 7 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 2 2 = 2 ⋅ 5 ⋅ 1 4 ⋅ 1 3 . This invites us to try
1 8 2 0 ⋅ 4 ! = 2 ⋅ ( 2 3 ⋅ 3 ) ⋅ 5 ⋅ 1 4 ⋅ 1 3 = 1 6 ⋅ 1 5 ⋅ 1 4 ⋅ 1 3 .
This shows that 1 8 2 0 = ( 1 6 4 ) .
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 ) = 1 8 2 0 . But this is not the case, since ( 1 4 7 ) = 3 4 3 2 > 1 8 2 0 .
Thus C and D are true and we submit the answer 2 .