Write . Since and , the orthogonal reflection satisfies and . Thus, for every Borel set , invariance under the orthogonal group gives
The spherical average must use normalized surface measure without an additional area factor. Let be the normalized surface measure on a sphere, and setThe correct radial disintegration of an orthogonally invariant measure isIndeed, take normalized Haar measure on the compact orthogonal group . Invariance and Fubini's theorem giveRight invariance of Haar measure and transitivity of the orthogonal group on each sphere show that the inner average depends only on . Averaging it once more over , using invariance of surface measure on a sphere and Fubini's theorem, identifies its value as . At the same identity reads . The definition of pushforward measure now proves the boxed formula. This argument also works for invariant probability measures with an atom of a measure at the origin.
For the printed normalization, choose a smooth cutoff function equal to one on a ball containing the support of a measure . Its left integral is one, whereas the printed right integral is . Thus the extra cannot be retained. Equivalently, with unnormalized area measure , the average is .
The reflection-averaging hint also fails in general dimension. For ,The first equality uses , which follows from coordinate reflections, coordinate permutations, and . Taking a test function equal to the first coordinate near the unit sphere disproves the hint when . Averaging over the full orthogonal group, as above, proves the required corrected result without that hint.
Let . The corrected radial disintegration of an orthogonally invariant measure, whose proof did not require absolute continuity of measures, gives for every test function Finite Borel measures on Euclidean space are determined by their integrals against test functions: the difference defines the zero distribution, or one can approximate continuous compactly supported functions uniformly by smooth functions and use regularity of the measures. Therefore