Circles wont work

What is the probability (to 3 decimal places) that a point P P picked uniformly at random inside an equilateral triangle, is closer to the centroid than to its sides?


The answer is 0.185.

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3 solutions

Lu Chee Ket
Oct 2, 2015

The same :)

Andrea Virgillito - 4 years, 4 months ago

How is this even discrete mathematics tho

Fabricio Kolberg - 3 years, 7 months ago
Gabriel Chacón
Feb 11, 2019

The points of the triangle that are at the same distance from the centroid and each side must lie on a parabola . The guitar-pluck-like shape formed by the intersection of the three parabolas contains all the points that are closer to the centroid than to its sides. Let's call S S the area of this region and T T , the area of the triangle. The probability we are looking for is p = S T p=\frac{S}{T} . By symmetry, this ratio can be obtained by calculating the areas of the regions O P Q OPQ and O A B OAB .

Consider a triangle of side 1 1 and write all coordinates with respect to A A . The position of its centroid is ( 0 , 3 6 ) (0,\frac{\sqrt{3}}{6}) and the vertex of the parabola lies at ( 0 , 3 12 ) (0,\frac{\sqrt{3}}{12}) .

The equations of line O B OB and parabola P Q PQ are:

line O B : y = 3 6 ( 1 2 x ) parabola: y = 3 ( x 2 + 1 12 ) \begin{aligned} \text{line }OB: y&=&\textstyle \frac{\sqrt{3}}{6}(1-2x) \\ \text{parabola: }y&=&\textstyle \sqrt{3}(x^2+\frac{1}{12}) \end{aligned}

These two curves intersect at x = 1 6 x=\frac{1}{6} .

The area O P Q OPQ is given by the integral 0 1 6 [ 3 6 ( 1 2 x ) 3 ( x 2 + 1 12 ) ] d x = 5 3 648 \displaystyle \int_{0}^{\frac{1}{6}} \textstyle \left[ \frac{\sqrt{3}}{6}(1-2x) -\sqrt{3}(x^2+\frac{1}{12})\right ]\,dx=\dfrac{5\sqrt{3}}{648}

and the area of triangle O A B OAB is 3 24 \dfrac{\sqrt{3}}{24} .

Finally, p = area O P Q area O A B = 5 27 p=\dfrac{\text{area } OPQ}{\text{area }OAB}=\boxed{\dfrac{5}{27}}

Just take 3 parabolas with centroid as d focus n side as directricz..

Can you elaborate on this approach? How do you perform the calculations?

Calvin Lin Staff - 5 years, 7 months ago

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