A probabilistic proof of the spherical excess formula

DOI10.1080/00029890.2021.1839303MaRDI QIDQ5144499zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Daniel A. Klain

Publication date 18 January 2021

Published in The American Mathematical Monthly (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.04505

zbMATH Keywords

Girard's angle excess formulaprobabilistic proofspherical triangle

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Convex sets in (3) dimensions (including convex surfaces) (52A15) Random convex sets and integral geometry (aspects of convex geometry) (52A22) Length, area, volume and convex sets (aspects of convex geometry) (52A38)

Abstract: This note offers a probabilistic proof of Girard's angle excess formula for the area of a spherical triangle, based on the observation that an unbounded 3-dimensional convex cone, with single vertex at the origin, has only three kinds of 2-dimensional orthogonal projections: a 2-dimensional convex cone with one vertex, a 2-dimensional half-plane (this is an outcome of probability zero), and a 2-dimensional plane.

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• A wonderful proof
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Cites work

• Angle Sums of Convex Polytopes.
• Angles as Probabilities
• Convex Polytopes
• Geometry of surfaces
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3289061 (Why is no real title available?)
• Intrinsic volumes of polyhedral cones: a combinatorial perspective

Cited in

(3)

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3876412 (Why is no real title available?)
• A wonderful proof
• Area formula for spherical polygons via prequantization

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