Question #b94a3

1 Answer
Feb 26, 2015

enter image source here (wikipedia)

The Pascal triangle gives the coefficients for each term of the expansion of (a+b)^n by taking the nth row of the triangle (the top 1 is not counted).

Example :
(a+b)^2=(1)*a^2+(2)*a^1b^1+(1)*b^2

In your case you would have to be aware that the b above must be substituted by 2y (and the a by x of course). We use the 4th row, which is the bottom row in the picture:

1*x^4+4*x^3(2y)+6*x^2(2y)^2+4*x(2y)^3+1*(2y)^4

=x^4+8x^3y+24x^2y^2+32xy^3+16y^4

You will notice that the exponents of the first term (x) go down from 4 to 0 and those of the second term (2y) go up from 0 to 4