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Random nested tetrahedra

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Scarsini

    (GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Aziendali - LUISS - Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli [Roma])

  • Gérard Letac

Abstract

In a real n-1 dimensional affine space E, consider a tetrahedron T0, i.e. the convex hull of n points α1, α2, ..., αn of E. Choose n independent points β1, β2, ..., βn randomly and uniformly in T0, thus obtaining a new tetrahedron T1 contained in T0. Repeat the operation with T1 instead of T0, obtaining T2, and so on. The sequence of the Tk shrinks to a point Y of T0 and this note computes the distribution of the barycentric coordinates of Y with respect to (α1, α2, ..., αn) (Corollary 2.3). We also obtain the explicit distribution of Y in more general cases. The technique used is to reduce the problem to the study of a random walk on the semigroup of stochastic (n,n) matrices, and this note is a geometrical application of a former result of Chamayou and Letac (1994).

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Scarsini & Gérard Letac, 1998. "Random nested tetrahedra," Post-Print hal-00541756, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00541756
    DOI: 10.1239/aap/1035228119
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Gupta, Rameshwar D. & Richards, Donald St. P., 2002. "Moment Properties of the Multivariate Dirichlet Distributions," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 240-262, July.
    2. Letac, Gérard & Massam, Hélène & Richards, Donald, 2001. "An Expectation Formula for the Multivariate Dirichlet Distribution," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 117-137, April.
    3. Letac, Gérard, 2002. "Donkey walk and Dirichlet distributions," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 17-22, March.

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