Personal Life
Pascal was born in this large European country in 1623 and spent most of his youth in its capital city of Paris.
What is France?
Found in his posthumously published work, Pensées, Pascal argued that one should live a life as if God exists because, if God doesn't exist and one lives their life as if He does, they lose very little. If God does exist, however, and one lives as if He doesn't, they will suffer eternal damnation.
What is Pascal's Wager?
This shape is formed when each number is the sum of the two numbers above it.
What is Pascal's triangle?
Pascal discovered that this factor has a major effect on air pressure.
At 19, Pascal was one of the first people to create a rudimentary version of this machine in order to help his father do his taxes.
What is a mechanical calculator (the Pascaline)?
Following a religious experience in 1654, Pascal converted to this Christian sect.
What is Catholicism?
Many of Pascal's written works contributed significantly to this area of rhetoric.
What is polemics?
Although his father had refused to educate him in mathematics, the 12 year old Pascal independently reproduced the first 32 geometric propositions of this famous Greek Mathematician.
Who is Euclid?
What is a syringe?
When working on their probability theorem, Pascal and Fermat discovered this concept, which refers to the generalized of a weighted average.
What is expected value?
In his early youth, Pascal's father banned him from studying mathematics despite his curiosity, fearing he would lose interest in this area of his education.
What are the Greco-Roman classics?
Pascal subscribed to this belief posited by Rene Descartes, which asserts that the mind and body are ontologically independent entities that are casually joined.
What is Cartesian Dualism?
Pascal worked closely with fellow mathematician Pierre de Fermat to construct this theorem to solve a gambling problem.
What is probability theorem?
This law of hydrostatics states that a pressure change at one point of an incompressible fluid is equally distributed throughout the fluid without diminishing and the forced caused by the pressure presses against the container's walls at right angles.
What is Pascal's Law?
Pascal invented a rudimentary version of this critical system of infrastructure commonly seen in cities and suburbs today.
What is a public transit system?
Pascal needed to stay near his sister, Jaqueline, for this reason.
What is chronic illness?
Pascal wrote several letters in support of this theological movement (later declared a heresy) within the Catholic Church which denied the role of free will in the reception and utilization of God's grace.
What is Jansenism?
This theorem posits that pairs of opposite points on a hexagon inscribed within a conic section always meet at three places on a straight line (called Pascal lines).
What is Pascal's theorem?
Following the work of the Italian scientist and mathematician Evangelisto Toricelli, Pascal conducted several experiments that advanced the understanding of this phenomenon which involves an extreme lack of atmospheric pressure.
What is a vacuum?
In his 1967 encyclical Populorum Progressio, this pope quoted Pascal's philosophical work called Pensées (thoughts).
Who is Saint Pope Paul IV?
Pascal's father was appointed to this position in the French government after regaining the good graces of a Cardinal of the Catholic Church.
What is a tax commissioner?
In Lettres Provinciales, his defense of Jansenism, Pascal pokes fun at this Catholic religious order also known as the Society of Jesus.
Who are the Jesuits?
Pascal's theorem pertains to this subsection of mathematics.
What is geometry?
English inventor Joseph Bramah drew directly from Pascal's law to invent this common industrial tool in 1795.
What is the hydraulic press?
At the tender age of ____ Pascal produced a treatise called Essai pour les coniques (Essay on Conics), his first serious mathematical work.
What is 16?