Sliding the rows of Pascal's triangle
John Wallis, in Arithmetica Infinitorum, wrote what we call Pascal's Triangle as a grid table; the entry in the (p,q) position is the binomial coefficient C(p+q,p). He then split the table, interpolating values for the half-integer values of p and q.
The young Isaac Newton read Wallis's work and rearranged the table, sliding the rows to the right. He then interpreted the entries as the coefficients of power series, which became known as the binomial series. See the lecture notes for details.
Susan Addington, Created with GeoGebra |