Buffon's needle problem visualized

IIvanLudvig 2 days ago 3 commentsRead Article on ivanludvig.dev

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millipede•about 5 hours ago

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.

LegionMammal978•about 2 hours ago

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

IvanLudvig•2 days ago

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