Celebrate Blaise Pascal

      A couple of weeks ago (on June 19) I learned on X (formerly Twitter) that 401 years ago, mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was born -- more info here.  Probably Pascal is best known for the array of numbers called Pascal's triangle -- and that array has influenced poetry as well as mathematics.

    My source of this info about Pascal was an ongoing collection of postings on X by Mathematics & Statistics St Andrews,  @StA_Maths_Stats, which offers lots of historical facts about math and math people.  Their June 19 posting offered this:

Here, in a TIMELINE of mathematics at the website MATHIGON, one may find links to biographical sketches of many mathematicians -- including Pascal. And, after clicking on the link for Pascal, one my find lots more about Pascal's Triangle.

Pascal's name is often connected with a wager that he developed to rationalize belief in God.  Here is A a poetic version of the wager (repeated from a 2013 posting):

from Pensèes     by Blaise Pascal (France, 1623-1662)

     Belief is a wise wager.  Granted that

     faith cannot be proved, what harm

     will come to you if you gamble

     on its truth and it proves false?

     . . . If you gain, you gain all;

     if you lose,

     you lose

     nothing.

     Wager, then, without

     hesitation, that

     He exists.