On a Surface Associated with Pascal’s Triangle

Abstract

An open problem in reliability theory is that of finding all the coefficients of the reliability polynomial associated with particular networks. Because reliability polynomials can be expressed in Bernstein form (hence linked to binomial coefficients), it is clear that an extension of the classical discrete Pascal’s triangle (comprising all the binomial coefficients) to a continuous version (exhibiting infinitely many values in between the binomial coefficients) might be geometrically helpful and revealing. That is why we have decided to investigate the geometric properties of a continuous extension of Pascal’s triangle including: Gauss curvatures, mean curvatures, geodesics, and level curves, as well as their symmetries.

Keywords

• Pascal’s triangle
• binomial coefficient
• geodesic
• Bernstein polynomial
• reliability polynomial