GeometryDifficulty 5.5AIME, harderFind the answerUnited States
Problem: On the perimeter of a unit circle, 12 points are chosen uniformly and independently at random. Estimate the expected value of the area of the convex 12-gon formed by these points.
Submit a positive number E written in decimal. If the correct answer is A, you will receive round (20e−15∣E−A∣) points.
A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.
Solution
Solution: We compute the exact answer as given above. Let n=12, and θ1,θ2,…,θn be uniformly randomly generated such that θ1+⋯+θn=2π. We are trying to estimate
E[21i=1∑nsin(θi)]=21i=1∑nE[sin(θi)].
We do this by computing the marginal distribution of θi, which is proportional to the area of the n−2 dimensional cross section
j=i∑θj=2π−θi.
The volume of this cross section is proportional to (2π−θi)n−2. Thus, the marginal probability distribution of θi can be written as
p(θi)=C(2π−θi)n−2
for some constant C. We can solve for C because we know ∫02πp(θi)dθi=1. The result is that
We can integrate this using tabular integration by parts.
Differentiate
Integrate
Sign
(1−θ/2π)10
sinθ
−5/π(1−θ/2π)9
cosθ
+
45/2π(1−θ/2π)8
−sinθ
-
−90/π(1−θ/2π)7
−cosθ
+
315/π(1−θ/2π)6
sinθ
-
−945/π(1−θ/2π)5
cosθ
+
4725/2π(1−θ/2π)4
−sinθ
-
4725/π(1−θ/2π)3
−cosθ
+
14175/2π(1−θ/2π)2
sinθ
-
14175/2π(1−θ/2π)1
cosθ
+
14175/4π10
−sinθ
-
cosθ
+
To compute the product, note that any term of the form C(1−2πθ)nsinθ vanishes when taking definite integral from 0 to 2π. Therefore, the desired value is