Tuesday, 28 March 2017

geometry - Probability that the circle will intersect the square.



We are randomly picking up two points inside a square, according to a uniform probability distribution. Draw a line segment which connects those two points. And use the line segment as a diameter for our circle.





What is the probability that the boundary of the circle will intersect the boundary of the square?




I can not come up with the correct and clear idea for the solution. Here is what I tried to do:
Let the square sides have length 2a. Let the points be (x1,y1) and (x2,y2). Where we have (0,0) in the leftmost lower corner.


Answer



Let P1,P2 be the picked points and M be the midpoint of P1P2.
Our random circle intersects the square iff the distance of M from the boundary of the square is less than the length of MP. Thus, assuming that the square is given by [1,1]2 and P1=(x1,y1), P2=(x2,y2), we want the probability of the event




min(1|x1+x22|,1|y1+y22|)12(x1x2)2+(y1y2)2


with x1,x2,y1,y2 being independent and uniformly distributed random variables over the interval [1,1]. The complementary event is given by
{(x1x2)2+(y1y2)22|x1+x2|(x1x2)2+(y1y2)22|y1+y2|

which is equivalent to
{(y1y2)24+4x1x24|x1+x2|(x1x2)24+4y1y24|y1+y2|

An efficient way for computing this probability is probably to assume that x1,x2 have already been fixed, compute the area of the subset of the y1y2 plane described by the previous inequalities as a function of x1 and x2, then integrate such function over [1,1]2 with respect to dx1dx2.


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