Sorry for the very basic question. I'm a programmer, not a mathematician. The title says it all but I'll just include a little background on why I asked the (stupid?) question.
I'd just finished solving Problem 15 from Project Euler. I used brute force (soooo slow) and I was curious if there's a faster way to do solve the problem. Most people from the Project Euler forum said that the problem could be solved using Combination or Pascal's Triangle. I googled those terms and found these interesting posts:
- Pascal's Triangle and Binomial Expansions
- Binomial Expansions
- The Binomial Theorem and Pascal’s Triangle
I understood the facinating relationship between Binomial Expansions and Pascal's Triangle, but I don't quite get the "Combination formula" as the shortcut/formula in getting the Binomial Coefficients.
Request:
Since I'm not a math gal, please refrain from posting very "deep"/complicated formulas. Just imagine you're trying to teach Binomial Expansions to a 9th grade student. ;)
If this is a duplicate post, I'm sorry, I don't know what math terms to search for. If I used the wrong terminologies, I'm sorry. Feel free to edit them.
Thanks in advance. :)
Related but hard to grok (for me) post: question about binomial expansion's coefficients