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Stability of a randomly legged round table

Question

Three legs are attached to the rim of a circular tabletop, each at an independent, uniformly random position. What is the probability the table stands up?

Short answer

1/41/4. The table stands exactly when the three points are not contained in any semicircle. For each point, the chance the other two lie in the half-circle clockwise from it is 14\tfrac14, and these three events are disjoint, so a semicircle contains all three with probability 34\tfrac34.

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