Tetragon for Two

Calculus Level 3

Two random points are uniformly chosen on the perimeter of a unit area square.
To 3 decimal places, find the expected value of the distance between these two points.


The answer is 0.735.

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1 solution

Andrew Hayes Staff
Mar 1, 2017

There is a 1 4 \frac{1}{4} chance that the points are on the same side, a 1 2 \frac{1}{2} chance that they are on adjacent sides, and a 1 4 \frac{1}{4} chance that they are on opposite sides.

Case 1 : The points are on the same side.

Let x x be the distance from a vertex to the first point, and let y y be the distance from the same vertex to the second point.

Then the expected value of the distance between the points is:

0 1 0 1 y x d y d x = 2 0 1 0 x ( y x ) d y d x = 1 3 \begin{aligned} \int_{0}^{1} \int_{0}^{1} |y-x|\ dy\ dx &= 2\int_{0}^{1} \int_{0}^{x} (y-x)\ dy\ dx \\ &= \frac{1}{3} \end{aligned}

Case 2 : The points are on adjacent sides.

Let x x be the distance from a vertex to the first point, and let y y be the distance from the same vertex to the second point.

Then the expected value of the distance between the points is:

0 1 0 1 x 2 + y 2 d y d x = 1 3 ( 2 + ln ( 1 + 2 ) ) \int_{0}^{1} \int_{0}^{1} \sqrt{x^2+y^2}\ dy\ dx = \frac{1}{3}\left(\sqrt{2}+\ln \left(1+\sqrt{2} \right) \right)

Case 3 : The points are on opposite sides.

Let x x be the distance from a vertex to the first point, and let y y be the distance from the adjacent vertex to the second point.

Then the expected value of the distance between the points is:

0 1 0 1 1 + ( y x ) 2 d y d x = 2 2 3 + ln ( 1 + 2 ) \int_{0}^{1} \int_{0}^{1} \sqrt{1+(y-x)^2}\ dy\ dx = \frac{2-\sqrt{2}}{3} + \ln \left(1+\sqrt{2} \right)

Weighting each of these expected values by their respective probabilities gives an expected value of approximately 0.735 . \boxed{0.735}.

Excellent presentation of a elegant solution.

W Rose - 2 years, 2 months ago

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