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I never heard that mathematical term before reading it here. Not even in 4 semesters of College Engineering Calculus.
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But you used them when you did the binomial expansion of (a + b)^n. Perhaps you called them the "binomial coefficients" and used the notation (n k).
(a + b)^n = a^n + C(n,1)*b*a^(n-1) + C(n,2)*b^2*a^(n-2) + C(n,3)*b^3*a^(n-3) + ... + C(n,n)*b^n
You can get the C(n,k) from the nth row of Pascal's triangle (starting with n=0). Each number is the sum of the two numbers above it.
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
1
1 1
1 2 1
1 3 3 1
1 4 6 4 1
....
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