Two random arcs on a circle not overlapping
Question
On the unit circle, colour red the counterclockwise arc from of angle , where . Independently draw , and colour blue the counterclockwise arc of angle that begins at the point at angle . What is the probability that the red and blue arcs do not intersect?
Short answer
. Measure angles as fractions of a full turn so all three variables are . The arcs are disjoint iff blue starts after red ends () and does not wrap back to (). Conditioning on , the probability is .
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