Difference between revisions of "Binomial Theorem"
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Revision as of 14:20, 12 July 2006
The Theorem
First discovered by Newton, the Binomial Theorem states that for real or complex a,b,.
This may be shown for the integers easily:
.
Repeatedly using the distributive property, we see that for a term , we must choose
of the
terms to contribute an
to the term, and then each of the other
terms of the product must contribute a
. Thus, the coefficient of
is
. Extending this to all possible values of
from
to
, we see that
.
Usage
Many factorizations involve complicated polynomials with binomial coefficients. For example, if a contest problem involved the polynomial , one could factor it as such:
. It is a good idea to be familiar with binomial expansions, and knowing the first few coefficients would also be beneficial.