Why is it called Pascal's triangle if it was discovered previously by other people? Why is this such a common occurrence in mathematics? Where a concept is named after a European who rediscovered something that was already known by older civilizations?
>The elements of Pascal’s triangle are called the binomial coefficients, because the
nth row consists of the coefficients of the terms in the expansion of (x + y)
n
.This pattern for computing the coefficients appeared in Blaise Pascal’s 1653 seminal work on
probability theory, Traité du triangle arithmétique. According to Knuth (1973), the same
papttern appears in the Szu-yuen Yü-chien (“
The Precious Mirror of the Four Elements”),
published by the Chinese mathematician Chu Shih-chieh in 1303, in the works of the
twelth-century Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam, and in the works of
the twelthh-century Hindu mathematician Bháscara Áchárya