Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 71 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A differential form of degree is integrated over an oriented -dimensional smooth manifold by integrating its coefficient in orientation-preserving coordinates. For an oriented parametrization , this means integrating the pullback over ; a partition of unity combines charts. The change of variables formula makes the result independent of the charts. Reversing the orientation of a smooth manifold reverses the integral. The Generalized Stokes theorem says, for a compact oriented -dimensional smooth manifold with boundary and a smooth -form ,where the right-hand side includes the boundary pullback, and the boundary has the outward-normal-first boundary orientation. Compact support suffices on a noncompact manifold. This unifies the fundamental theorem of calculus, circulation and flux identities.
For example, take the unit disk oriented by and the differential one-form . Its exterior derivative is , so the area integral is . Parametrizing the positively oriented circle by gives the pullback and the boundary integral , directly illustrating Generalized Stokes theorem.
For the distance calculation, write , , and ; these are scalar radii, not position vectors. The triangle inequality and its reverse give and . Also,Thus and . These conditions, with , are also sufficient for a triangle with side lengths . Endpoints correspond to collinear configurations.
Assume the two positions are independent random variables, each having constant volume probability density inside the radius- ball. Independence is needed: uniform marginal distributions alone do not determine the distance distribution. Put and . The change of variables has unit Jacobian determinant, so the joint probability volume differential form is the product of the two normalized volume forms. In spherical coordinates for and for relative to its axis, it isThe polar coordinates fail on axes and at zero radii, which are sets of zero volume and do not affect the probability. Here is the angle from to . The law of cosines becomesDifferentiating and taking the wedge product with eliminates the terms involving and :Consequently the positive integration density transforms by at fixed . The minus sign is accounted for by reversal of limits: decreases as increases. The radial variable retained is , while the polar angle is replaced by ; equivalently one can start with the angle between the two position vectors and replace that angle by . The wording of the printed hint conflates these two coordinate choices, but its volume form gives the stated transformation directly.
Integrating over the first orientation gives , and integrating gives . The probability density function of is thereforewhere has and . There are no such configurations for .
To evaluate this integral explicitly, the Jacobian determinant of has absolute value . Hence as a positive density. For , set . The domain is , , and evenness in givesAn antiderivative, zero at , yieldsSubstituting for and for gives the same polynomial in both intervals:Thus the distance between two uniform points in a three-dimensional ball has the final densityIt is zero outside this interval. Its nonnegativity also follows from , and direct integration gives . The derivation uses the full six-dimensional probability volume differential form, rather than treating the three scalar distances as independent.