"Stan Gula" wrote in message
news:Fik2h.10075$gf5.7278@trndny01...
"Kevin Vang" wrote:
Two darts could conceivable land equidistant from the center; however,
the probability of that happening is 0. Explaining why will require a
bit of less than elementary probability theory, with integral calculus
as a prerequisite. We can go there, if you are up to it...

Kevin

I was wondering when you would pop up. We could let it go with an "It's
intuitively obvious and not important in solving the problem at hand". In
practice, we're talking about physical objects which are not made up of
infinitesimal particles, but a finite set of rather large (relatively)
molecules of stuff, so the set of positions where a dart could penetrate
is a very small subset (albeit a very large set) of the set of points on a
circle through the location of any dart. In practice, I would prefer to
find an approximation to the solution through Monte Carlo simulation (with
real darts, not a computer model), accompanied by large quantities of
fermented malt. In which case I'd hazard (hah!) a guess that the
probability approaches 1 as the amount of malt consumed approaches
unconsciousness.

--
Stan
from the applied side.

I concur. But I was also about to propose to Jon (who IS a computer geek) to
write a computer simulation and run it a few hundred million times.

--riverman