medium   Probability

Connected Square

A release-checked medium problem for training Linearity of Expectation, Geometric Probability.

Question

Fix a positive integer $n$ and a positive real number $a$. $n$ points are selected uniformly at random from the square with vertices $(\pm a, \pm a)$ in the plane. Afterwards, each pair of points is connected by a line segment. Find the expected number of total intersections between the line segments and the coordinate axes ($x-$axis and $y-$axis). Note that we are not counting intersections between line segments themselves. Report the answer when $n = 10$ and $a = 4$.

Practice focus

This Probability problem is tagged Linearity of Expectation, Geometric Probability. State the random variables and conditioning information explicitly, then check the result against boundary cases before opening hints or a solution.

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