Wed, April 24, 2019
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Math Building 052
Title: “What is the probability that a random triangle is obtuse?”
Speaker: Tom Needham (Ohio State University)
Abstract: In his 1895 book of mathematical puzzles, Lewis Carroll posed the following basic question in geometric probability: “What is the probability that a random triangle is obtuse?” The question is ill-posed, as one must choose a probability measure on the collection of all triangles. In this talk we will discuss various approaches to this question and demonstrate some surprising connections to differential geometry.