Four points are chosen at random from the interior of a circle. What is the probability that the sum of each of their distances from the center is greater than half the circumference of the circle?

Tatiana Cook

Tatiana Cook

Answered question

2022-10-02

Finding Geometric Probability?
Four points are chosen at random from the interior of a circle. What is the probability that the sum of each of their distances from the center is greater than half the circumference of the circle?

Answer & Explanation

Allvin03

Allvin03

Beginner2022-10-03Added 7 answers

Step 1
Assume the disk have radius 1.
If you have r U n i [ 0 , 1 ], i.e. random radius and θ U n i [ 0 , 2 π ], i.e. random angle, then X = r cos θ and Y = r sin θ have a joint pdf on the disk 1 π , i.e. describes a point picked uniformly at random on the disk.
Step 2
And R = X 2 + Y 2
Jamarcus Lindsey

Jamarcus Lindsey

Beginner2022-10-04Added 1 answers

Step 1
Denote by R the absolute value of a uniformly distributed random point Z in the unit disc. The cdf and the pdf of R are then given by
(1) F 1 ( s ) = { 0 ( s < 0 ) s 2 ( 0 s 1 ) 1 ( s 1 )   , f R ( s ) = { 0 ( s < 0 ) 2 s ( 0 < s < 1 ) 0 ( s > 1 )   .
The index 1 refers to the first random point. Using (1) one computes the cdf F 2 ( s ) of R 1 + R 2 for two random points, and then F 3 ( s ), F 4 ( s ) as follows:
F 2 ( s ) = 0 1 f R ( t ) F 1 ( s t ) d t , , F 4 ( s ) = 0 1 f R ( t ) F 3 ( s t ) d t   .
Step 2
Mathematica obtained the following expression for F 4 ( s ) in the interval 3 < s < 4:
31192 12288 s 17920 s 2 + 12544 s 3 1680 s 4 448 s 5 + 112 s 6 s 8 2520   .
The probability p that R 1 + R 2 + R 3 + R 4 π then comes to p = 1 F 4 ( π ) 0.1625   .

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