Related papers: On Buffon Machines and Numbers
I present a variant of the Buffon Needle method for determination of the value of the mathematical constant, pi. The original method is based on the random casting of a needle of length l onto a planked floor of plank width L. The described…
Buffon-Laplace Needle Problem considers a needle of a length $l$ randomly dropped on a large plane distributed with vertically parallel lines with distances $a$ and $b$ ($a \geqslant b$), respectively. As a classical problem in stochastic…
We consider a model of randomness for self-similar Cantor sets of finite and positive $1$-Hausdorff measure. We find the sharp rate of decay of the probability that a Buffon needle lands $\delta$-close to a Cantor set of this particular…
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…
If you throw a needle or stick at random onto a floor ruled with parallel lines, such as the cracks between floorboards or tiles, from the proportion of times that the stick lands crossing a crack you can estimate $\pi$; can we get $e$ as…
What is the probability that a needle dropped at random on a set of points scattered on a line segment does not fall on any of them? We compute the exact scaling expression of this hole probability when the spacings between the points are…
We solve a variant of the classical Buffon Needle problem. More specifically, we inspect the probability that a randomly oriented needle of length $l$ originating in a bounded convex set $X\subset\mathbb{R}^2$ lies entirely within $X$.…
Suppose a coin with unknown probability $p$ of heads can be flipped as often as desired. A Bernoulli factory for a function $f$ is an algorithm that uses flips of the coin together with auxiliary randomness to flip a single coin with…
The Bernoulli Factory is an algorithm that takes as input a series of i.i.d. Bernoulli random variables with an unknown but fixed success probability $p$, and outputs a corresponding series of Bernoulli random variables with success…
In 1733, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in France, set the ground of geometric probability theory by defining an enlightening problem: What is the probability that a needle thrown randomly on a ground made of equispaced parallel…
Let $\Cant_n$ be the $n$-th generation in the construction of the middle-half Cantor set. The Cartesian square $\K_n$ of $\Cant_n$ consists of $4^n$ squares of side-length $4^{-n}$. The chance that a long needle thrown at random in the unit…
Let $\Cant_n$ be the $n$-th generation in the construction of the middle-half Cantor set. The Cartesian square $\K_n = \Cant_n \times \Cant_n$ consists of $4^n$ squares of side-length $4^{-n}$. The chance that a long needle thrown at random…
In recent years, relatively sharp quantitative results in the spirit of the Besicovitch projection theorem have been obtained for self-similar sets by studying the $L^p$ norms of the "projection multiplicity" functions, $f_\theta$, where…
Particle physics experiments such as those run in the Large Hadron Collider result in huge quantities of data, which are boiled down to a few numbers from which it is hoped that a signal will be detected. We discuss a simple probability…
Underwater robotics addresses the problem of object detection apparatus. Offers a probabilistic formulation of the problem, which uses the reduction of the detection task to a classical task of Buffon. This formulation arises naturally in…
We review the well known Bertrand paradoxes, and we first maintain that they do not point to any probabilistic inconsistency, but rather to the risks incurred with a careless use of the locution "at random". We claim then that these…
In this paper we get a power estimate from above of the probability that Buffon's needle will land within distance 3^{-n} of Sierpinski's gasket of Hausdorff dimension 1. In comparison with the case of 1/4 corner Cantor set considered in…
Assume that one aims to simulate an event of unknown probability $s\in (0,1)$ which is uniquely determined, however only its approximations can be obtained using a finite computational effort. Such settings are often encountered in…
We shall show in this paper that there are experiments which are Bernoulli trials with success probability p > 0.5, and which have the curious feature that it is possible to correctly predict the outcome with probability > p.
We want to select the best systems out of a given set of systems (or rank them) with respect to their expected performance. The systems allow random observations only and we assume that the joint observation of the systems has a…