Combinatorics | Statistical randomness | Euclidean geometry | Spatial analysis
Alignments of random points
Alignments of random points in a plane can be demonstrated by statistics to be counter-intuitively easy to find when a large number of random points are marked on a bounded flat surface. This has been put forward as a demonstration that ley lines and other similar mysterious alignments believed by some to be phenomena of deep significance might exist solely due to chance alone, as opposed to the supernatural or anthropological explanations put forward by their proponents. The topic has also been studied in the fields of computer vision and astronomy. A number of studies have examined the mathematics of alignment of random points on the plane. In all of these, the width of the line — the allowed displacement of the positions of the points from a perfect straight line — is important. It allows the fact that real-world features are not mathematical points, and that their positions need not line up exactly for them to be considered in alignment. Alfred Watkins, in his classic work on ley lines The Old Straight Track, used the width of a pencil line on a map as the threshold for the tolerance of what might be regarded as an alignment. For example, using a 1 mm pencil line to draw alignments on a 1:50,000 scale Ordnance Survey map, the corresponding width on the ground would be 50 m. (Wikipedia).
