TY - JOUR
T1 - How likely is buffon's needle to fall near a planar cantor set?
AU - Peres, Yuval
AU - Solomyak, Boris
PY - 2002
Y1 - 2002
N2 - Let Λ be a compact planar set of positive finite one-dimensional Hausdorff measure. Suppose that the intersection of Λ with any rectifiable curve has zero length. Then a theorem of Besicovitch (1939) states that the orthogonal projection of Λ on almost all lines has zero length. Consequently, the probability p(Λ, ε) that a needle dropped at random will fall within distance ε from Λ, tends to zero with ε. However, existing proofs do not yield any explicit upper bound tending to zero for p(Λ, ε), even in the simplest cases, e.g., when Λ = K2 is the Cartesian square of the middle-haif Cantor set K. In this paper we establish such a bound for a class of selfsimilar sets Λ that includes K2. We also determine the order of magnitude of p(Λ, ε) for certain stochastically self-similar sets Λ. Determining the order of magnitude of p(K2, ε) is an unsolved problem.
AB - Let Λ be a compact planar set of positive finite one-dimensional Hausdorff measure. Suppose that the intersection of Λ with any rectifiable curve has zero length. Then a theorem of Besicovitch (1939) states that the orthogonal projection of Λ on almost all lines has zero length. Consequently, the probability p(Λ, ε) that a needle dropped at random will fall within distance ε from Λ, tends to zero with ε. However, existing proofs do not yield any explicit upper bound tending to zero for p(Λ, ε), even in the simplest cases, e.g., when Λ = K2 is the Cartesian square of the middle-haif Cantor set K. In this paper we establish such a bound for a class of selfsimilar sets Λ that includes K2. We also determine the order of magnitude of p(Λ, ε) for certain stochastically self-similar sets Λ. Determining the order of magnitude of p(K2, ε) is an unsolved problem.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0036347414&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2140/pjm.2002.204.473
DO - 10.2140/pjm.2002.204.473
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AN - SCOPUS:0036347414
SN - 0030-8730
VL - 204
SP - 473
EP - 496
JO - Pacific Journal of Mathematics
JF - Pacific Journal of Mathematics
IS - 2
ER -