Expected perimeter of a triangle inscribed at random
Question
Pick three points , , independently and uniformly on the unit circle. The expected perimeter of triangle can be written as with rational. What is ?
Short answer
. The three sides have the same distribution, so the expected perimeter is three times the expected chord length. With central angle the chord is , whose mean is , so the perimeter averages .
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- Expectation, Mean, and Variance
- Conditional Expectation and Variance Revisited
- Continuous Random Variables and Probability Density Functions
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