self-avoiding random angles
An apparently easy riddle from The Riddler this week: given N random half-lines starting from a N-S segment, what is the probability that none ever intersect? If m ½-lines are on the same side of the segment, they will not intersect when their angle with the segment is decreasing with the longitude of the endpoint of this ½-line on the segment. Assuming that drawing a ½-line at random is akin to uniformely drawing an angle on (0,π), this no X’ing event happens when the m angles are properly ordered, a 1/m! event. Independently, the probability for the segments on the other side is 1/(N-m)! The joint probability is thus
Leave a Reply