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Calculus Level 2

A triangle and a rectangle are in semicircles of radius r r where two of their vertices are on the diameter, and the rests are on the arc. The angle of vertex A A of the triangle is equally probable to be any angle between 0 0 and π 2 \dfrac { \pi }{ 2 } , while for a rectangle the height G H GH is equally probable to be any height between 0 0 and r r . If you throw a dart and hit a polygon in the semicircle you will win a prize, but you are blindfolded, and you just have one chance. Which polygon will you choose? Why?

Assume that the dart has an equal chance of landing anywhere on the semicircle.

Rectangle Triangle

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2 solutions

Sam Bealing
Apr 9, 2016

We can calculate the expected area for the two shapes. We want to aim at the one with the largest area to have the highest probability of hitting it. WLOG, let r = 1 r=1 and let O O be the centre of the circle. We begin with the triangle :

Let C A B = θ C O B = 2 θ \angle CAB= \theta \Rightarrow \angle COB = 2 \theta because angle at the centre is twice angle at the circumference.

We calculate the area of [ A C B ] = [ C O A ] + [ C O B ] = 1 2 × 1 × 1 × sin ( 18 0 2 θ ) + 1 2 × 1 × 1 × sin ( 2 θ ) = sin ( 2 θ ) [\triangle ACB]= [\triangle COA]+[\triangle COB]=\frac{1}{2} \times 1 \times 1 \times \sin{(180^{\circ}-2\theta)}+\frac{1}{2} \times 1 \times 1 \times \sin{(2\theta)}=\sin{(2 \theta)}

So the expected value of the area is 0 π 2 sin ( 2 θ ) d θ π 2 0 = 1 π 2 = 2 π \frac{\int_{0}^{\frac{\pi}{2}}{\sin{(2 \theta)} d \theta}}{\frac{\pi}{2}-0}=\frac{1}{\frac{\pi}{2}}=\frac{2}{\pi} .

Now we move on to the rectangle :

If the height of the rectangle is h h we have the width of the triangle as 2 1 h 2 2 \sqrt{1-h^2} by Pythagoras' theorem on F O M \triangle FOM where M M is the midpoint of F G FG .

The area of the rectangle therefore is 2 h 1 h 2 2h \sqrt{1-h^2} .

The expected value is: 0 r 2 h 1 h 2 d h 1 0 = 2 3 \frac{\int_{0}^{r}{2h \sqrt{1-h^2} dh}}{1-0}=\frac{2}{3} .

As π > 3 2 π < 2 3 \pi>3 \Rightarrow \frac{2}{\pi}<\frac{2}{3} so the expected area of the rectangle is bigger so we want to aim at the rectangle .

Moderator note:

Good explanation of how to deal with the geometric probability via integration.

FYI There were slight typos with your equations and I have fixed them.

Calvin Lin Staff - 5 years, 2 months ago
Manu Attri
Apr 28, 2016

Area of triangle <= r^2 , Area of rectangle < 2r^2 , greater the area of a polygon greater the chances of dart hitting the polygon , so the answer is rectangle.

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