Maths Olympiad Prep

Track / Stage 4 / 144 of 340 #404 of 1964

Problem 404

AMC 12 late, AIME early
Combinatorics Difficulty 4.8 Find the answer

12. Arrange the numbers of Pascal's Triangle aligned to the far left as follows:

The numbers in the diagonal direction connected by arrows are referred to as a diagonal, for example, the first diagonal is “ 111 \leftarrow 1 ”, the second diagonal is “ 121 \longleftrightarrow \rightarrow 2 ”, and the third diagonal is “ 1311 \longleftrightarrow 3 \longleftrightarrow \rightarrow 1 ”.
What is the sum of all the numbers on the 13th diagonal?

A number or a short expression. Spacing, $ signs and \frac vs / are all fine.

Official solution

【Analysis】Find the pattern
The sums are 2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,610;.2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,610 ; \ldots .. (Notice that each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two)
The thirteenth sum is 610.

Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic, difficulty and ordering added by this site.