[Math] name for this kind of “Pascal’s Triangle”

combinatoricsterminology

I've been working on a problem and came across an interesting triangle that functions almost exactly like a Pascal Triangle. I'd like to see if I am able to find more about the properties of these triangles. I've found information on Pascal's simplexes, but that is not what this is.

Pascal's Triangle can be constructed by the fact that each cell is the sum of the $2$ above it. But I'm interested in the resulting triangles when you sum the above $3$ cells, $4$ cells, or more.

$n=3$:

$$
1\\
1\ \ 1\ \ 1\\
1\ \ 2\ \ 3\ \ 2\ \ 1\\
1\ \ 3\ \ 6\ \ 7\ \ 6\ \ 3\ \ 1\\
$$

$n=5$:

$$
1\\
1\ \ \ 1\ \ \ 1\ \ \ 1\ \ \ 1\\
1\ \ \ 2\ \ \ 3\ \ \ 4\ \ \ 5\ \ \ 4\ \ \ 3\ \ \ 2\ \ \ 1\\
1\ \ \ 3\ \ \ 6\ \ 10\ 15\ 18\ 19\ 18\ 15\ 10\ \ 6\ \ \ 3\ \ \ 1
$$

In particular what I'd like to know is how to generate an arbitrary row, like the $20$th row when $n=11$.

Best Answer

They don't have names to my knowledge, but they're easy to calculate. For example, you can find the third row of the order-3 triangle by expanding:

$$(1 + x + x^2)^3 = 1 + 3x + 6x^2 + 7x^3 + 6x^4 + 3x^5 + x^6$$

In general, the $n$th row of the order-$k$ triangle is given by expanding

$$\left( \sum_{i=0}^{k-1} x^i \right)^n$$

and reading off the coefficients. The proof (it's not hard) is left as an exercise.

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