suyash sinha
Last Activity: 7 Years ago
There are $\binom{2n+1}{3}$ ways how to pick the three vertices. We will now count the ways where the interior does NOT contain the center. These are obviously exactly the ways where all three picked vertices lie among some $n+1$ consecutive vertices of the polygon. We will count these as follows: We will go clockwise around the polygon. We can pick the first vertex arbitrarily ($2n+1$ possibilities). Once we pick it, we have to pick $2$ out of the next $n$ vertices ($\binom{n}{2}$ possibilities).Then the probability that our triangle does NOT contain the center is \[p = \frac{ (2n+1){\binom{n}{2}} }{ {\binom{2n+1}{3} } } = \frac{ (1/2)(2n+1)(n)(n-1) }{ (1/6)(2n+1)(2n)(2n-1) } = \frac{ 3(n)(n-1) }{ (2n)(2n-1) }\]And then the probability we seek is \[1-p = \frac{ (2n)(2n-1) - 3(n)(n-1) }{ (2n)(2n-1) } = \frac{ n^2+n }{ 4n^2 - 2n } = \boxed{\frac{n+1}{4n-2}}\]