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Random point in a cylinder lying in its cone

Question

A point is chosen uniformly at random inside a solid upright cylinder of radius rr and height hh whose bottom face is centred at the origin. Inside the cylinder sits a cone with the same base and the same height. What is the probability the point lies inside the cone?

Short answer

13\tfrac13. For a uniform point the probability is a volume ratio, and a cone has one third the volume of the cylinder with the same base and height: 13πr2h/(πr2h)\tfrac13\pi r^2h/(\pi r^2h).

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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