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# Buffon's Needle - Calculus Introduction

Course Topic(s): Probability | Famous Problems, Buffon's needle | Continuous Distributions, uniform and beta

Approaches problem from a calculus viewpoint where the goal is to estimate the probability of a needle of fixed length to land on a line of equally spaced parallel lines. Explanation of the change to the probability as the length of the needle is less than, equal to, and greater than the distance between lines is given. An applet linked on the right hand side, illustrates the estimate of $$\pi$$ based $$n$$ tosses of a needle.

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Subject classification(s): Simulation | Limit Theorems | Probability | Statistics and Probability

Creator(s): Wolfram MathWorld

Contributor(s): Wolfram MathWorld

This resource was cataloged by Carolyn Cuff

Publisher:
Wolfram Research, Inc.

Resource copyright: 2011 Wolfram Alpha LLCâ€”A Wolfram Research Company

This review was published on September 20, 2012