Maths Olympiad Prep

Track / Stage 5 / 138 of 400 #738 of 1964

Problem 738

AIME late
Combinatorics Difficulty 5.4 Find the answer

Three. (20 points) As shown in Figure 1, the center of the regular hexagon ABCDEFA B C D E F is OO. For any two points among A,B,C,D,E,F,OA, B, C, D, E, F, O, a vector is drawn from one point to another. If two vectors are randomly selected, the absolute value of their dot product is taken as the random variable ξ\xi. Try to find the probability distribution of ξ\xi and its mathematical expectation Eξ\mathrm{E} \xi.

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A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Official solution

Three, the number of vectors generated is C72=21\mathrm{C}_{7}^{2}=21, then we can take C212=210\mathrm{C}_{21}^{2}=210 pairs of vectors. Let the vectors taken be a,ba, b. Since ξ=ab=abcosa,b\xi=|a \cdot b|=|a| \cdot|b| \cdot|\cos \langle a, b\rangle|, therefore, the direction of the vectors can be ignored. Without loss of generality, let the angle between the two vectors be the angle between their respective lines (with a range of [0,90]\left[0^{\circ}, 90^{\circ}\right]), then the angle between any two vectors belongs to the set {0,30,60,90}\left\{0^{\circ}, 30^{\circ}, 60^{\circ}, 90^{\circ}\right\}, and the magnitude of each vector belongs to the set {1,3,2}\{1, \sqrt{3}, 2\}, where the number of vectors with a magnitude of 1 is 12, the number of vectors with a magnitude of 3\sqrt{3} is 6, and the number of vectors with a magnitude of 2 is 3.

If a=b=2|a|=|b|=2, then the angle between them must be 6060^{\circ}, ab=2|a \cdot b|=2, and the probability is 12×3×2210=170\frac{1}{2} \times \frac{3 \times 2}{210}=\frac{1}{70}.

If a=b=3|\boldsymbol{a}|=|\boldsymbol{b}|=\sqrt{3}, then the angle between them can be 00^{\circ} or 6060^{\circ}. When the angle is 00^{\circ}, ab=3|a \cdot b|=3, and the probability is 12×6×1210=170\frac{1}{2} \times \frac{6 \times 1}{210}=\frac{1}{70}; when the angle is 6060^{\circ}, ab=32|a \cdot b|=\frac{3}{2}, and the probability is 12×4×6210=235\frac{1}{2} \times \frac{4 \times 6}{210}=\frac{2}{35}.

If a=b=1|\boldsymbol{a}|=|\boldsymbol{b}|=1, then the angle between them can be 00^{\circ} or 6060^{\circ}. It is easy to know that their probabilities are
12×3×12210=335,12×8×12210=835 \frac{1}{2} \times \frac{3 \times 12}{210}=\frac{3}{35}, \frac{1}{2} \times \frac{8 \times 12}{210}=\frac{8}{35} \text {. }

If a=2,b=3|a|=2,|\boldsymbol{b}|=\sqrt{3}, then the angle between them can be 3030^{\circ} or 9090^{\circ}. It is easy to know that their probabilities are 3×4210=235,3×2210=135\frac{3 \times 4}{210}=\frac{2}{35}, \frac{3 \times 2}{210}=\frac{1}{35}.

If a=2,b=1|a|=2,|b|=1, then the angle between them can be 00^{\circ} or 6060^{\circ}. It is easy to know that their probabilities are 3×4210=235,3×8210=435\frac{3 \times 4}{210}=\frac{2}{35}, \frac{3 \times 8}{210}=\frac{4}{35}.

If a=3,b=1|\boldsymbol{a}|=\sqrt{3},|\boldsymbol{b}|=1, then the angle between them can be 3030^{\circ} or 9090^{\circ}. It is easy to know that their probabilities are 6×8210=835,6×4210=435\frac{6 \times 8}{210}=\frac{8}{35}, \frac{6 \times 4}{210}=\frac{4}{35}.

Thus, the probability distribution of ξ\xi is shown in Table 1: Therefore, the mathematical expectation of ξ\xi is
Eξ=0×17+12×835+1×15+32×27+2×114+3×114=1110. \begin{array}{l} E \xi=0 \times \frac{1}{7}+\frac{1}{2} \times \frac{8}{35}+1 \times \frac{1}{5}+ \\ \quad \frac{3}{2} \times \frac{2}{7}+2 \times \frac{1}{14}+3 \times \frac{1}{14} \\ =\frac{11}{10} . \end{array}

Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic, difficulty and ordering added by this site.