History
This formula and the triangular arrangement of the binomial coefficients are often attributed to Blaise Pascal, who described them in the 17th century, but they were known to many mathematicians who preceded him. The 4th century B.C. Greek mathematician Euclid mentioned the special case of the binomial theorem for exponent 2 as did the 3rd century B.C. Indian mathematician Pingala to higher orders. A more general binomial theorem and the so-called "Pascal's triangle" were known in the 10th-century A.D. to Indian mathematician Halayudha and Persian mathematician Al-Karaji, in the 11th century to Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam, and in the 13th century to Chinese mathematician Yang Hui, who all derived similar results. Al-Karaji also provided a mathematical proof of both the binomial theorem and Pascal's triangle, using mathematical induction.
Read more about this topic: Binomial Theorem
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)