The probability of a random straight line in two and three dimensions

Abstract Using properties of shift- and rotation-invariance probability density distributions are derived for random straight lines in normal representation. It is found that in two-dimensional space the distribution of normal coordinates ( r , ϕ ) is uniform: p ( r , ϕ ) = c , where c is a normalisation constant. In three dimensions the distribution is given by: p ( r , ϕ , θ , ξ ) = cr sin θ .