Expressions are derived for the third and fourth moments of the distribution of the numbers of sides of the polygons formed by random lines in a plane. These are evaluated numerically; it seems unlikely that they can be expressed simply in terms of elementary functions or constants. Using these results, the third and fourth moments of the distribution of the perimeters of the polygons are derived.

An expression is derived for the proportion of quadrilaterals among the polygons formed by random lines in the plane. Its value is 0.381 466….

Many random variables arising in problems of geometric probability have intractable densities, and it is very difficult to find probabilities or percentage points based on these densities. A simple approximation, a generalization of the chi-square distribution, is suggested, to approximate such densities; the approximation uses the first three moments. These may be theoretically derived, or may be obtained from Monte Carlo sampling.

The approximation is illustrated on random variables (the area, the perimeter, and the number of sides) associated with random polygons arising from two processes in the plane. Where it can be checked theoretically, the approximation gives good results. It is compared also with Pearson curve fits to the densities.

We consider a countable number of independent random uniform lines in the hyperbolic plane (in the sense of the theory of geometrical probability) which divide the plane into an infinite number of convex polygonal regions. The main purpose of the paper is to compute the mean number of sides, the mean perimeter, the mean area and the second order moments of these quantities of such polygonal regions. For the Euclidean plane the problem has been considered by several authors, mainly Miles [4]–[9] who has taken it as the starting point of a series of papers which are the basis of the so-called stochastic geometry.