Intersection of Diagonals

Probability Level pending

If we take a pair of diagonals from a regular 100 g o n 100-gon what is the probability that they intersect between the polygon?

Note: Intersection on the points and outside the polygon are not counted. For example, a quadrilateral has 1 1 such(correct) pair, a pentagon has 5 5 pairs a hexagon has 15 15 pairs.

97/303 194/303 97/101 1/6 1/3 none of the options 1617/4849

This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and, finally, (c) loading the non-javascript version of this page . We're sorry about the hassle.

1 solution

Saad Khondoker
Mar 11, 2021

The number of ways we can take a diagonal pair of a 100 g o n 100-gon = ( 100 C 2 100 ) C 2 =(100C_{2}-100)C_{2}
[the number of diagonals = 100 C 2 100C_{2} ]

Among the diagonals only those pair will intersect between the polygon which are created using 4 4 different points.
[we can also create 2 2 pair by taking 3 3 points but they will not intersect in between]

The way to take a pair of lines using 4 4 different points = ( 100 C 2 98 C 2 ) / ( 2 ! ) =(100C_{2}*98C_{2})/(2!)
[here we divided by 2 ! 2! because we are taking 2 2 groups with same size and we don't care about the serial of taking them, if they were of different size we would not have worried about it that is we would not have divided by 2 ! 2! ]

But not all of them will intersect. We can create 3 3 different pairs with these points and only 1 of them intersects.
So the number of such(correct) pairs = ( 100 C 2 98 C 2 ) / ( 2 3 ) =(100C_{2}*98C_{2})/(2*3)

So the probability = ( 100 C 2 98 C 2 ) / ( 2 3 ) ( 100 C 2 100 ) C 2 \frac{(100C_{2}*98C_{2})/(2*3)}{(100C_{2}-100)C_{2}} = 3921225 11758825 \frac{3921225}{11758825} = 1617 4849 \frac{1617}{4849}

0 pending reports

×

Problem Loading...

Note Loading...

Set Loading...