Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.0 AIME, harder Prove it United States

Problem:

A dart is thrown at a square dartboard of side length 22 so that it hits completely randomly. What is the probability that it hits closer to the center than any corner, but within a distance 11 of a corner?

Solution

Solution:

By symmetry it will suffice to consider one quarter of the dartboard, which is a square of side length 11. Therefore the probability is the area of the desired region in this square. The desired region is the part of the circle of radius 11 centered at a corner that is closer to the opposite corner. The points closer to the opposite corner are those that are on the other side of the diagonal through the other two corners, so the desired region is a quarter of a circle of radius 11 minus a right triangle with legs of length 11. Therefore the area (and hence the probability) is π24\frac{\pi-2}{4}.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.