Buffon's needle problem visualized

25 points

1/21/1970

4 days ago

by IvanLudvig

Comments

IvanLudvig

context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon's_needle_problem

4 days ago

millipede

Picking a random orientation depends on trigonometric functions. In order for this to calculate, it would be a lot cooler if it didn't depend on transcendental functions.

2 days ago

LegionMammal978

You can pick a uniform random orientation without trig functions by first generating a random point in the unit disk via rejection sampling, then projecting it onto the boundary [0].

Of course, using rejection sampling for disk points will give you an estimate for π more directly.

[0] https://mathworld.wolfram.com/CirclePointPicking.html

2 days ago

nom

It's not numerically converging for me, no matter how long I run it.

a day ago