English

Buffon's problem with a star of needles and a lattice of parallelograms

Probability 2012-09-25 v1

Abstract

A star of n (n greater than or equal to 2) line segments (needles) of equal length with common endpoint and constant angular spacing is randomly placed onto a lattice which is the union of two families of equidistant lines in the plane with angle alpha between the nonparallel lines. For odd n, we calculate the probabilities of exactly i intersections between the star and the lattice (for even n, see [3]). Using a geometrical method, we derive the limit distribution function of the relative number of intersections as n tends to infinity. This function is independent of alpha. We show that the relative numbers for each of the two families are asymptotically independent random variables.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1209.5241,
  title  = {Buffon's problem with a star of needles and a lattice of parallelograms},
  author = {Uwe Bäsel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.5241},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

22 pages, 13 figures