Given four random lines in $\mathbb{R}P^3$, how many lines intersect all of those lines? In the recent paper [Probabilistic Schubert Calculus](http://arxiv.org/abs/1612.06893v1), Peter Bürgisser and Antonio Lerario discuss this question and much more general versions of it. In **Proposition 6.7**, they determine the expected number of lines meeting four random lines in $\mathbb{R}P^3$ to be: $$\operatorname{edeg}G(2,4) =\\ 2^{-13}\int_{[0,2\pi]^6}\left| \det\begin{pmatrix} \sin{t_1}\sin{s_1}&\sin{t_2}\sin{s_2}&\sin{t_3}\sin{s_3}\\ \cos{t_1}\sin{s_1}&\cos{t_2}\sin{s_2}&\cos{t_3}\sin{s_3}\\ \sin{t_1}\cos{s_1}&\sin{t_2}\cos{s_2}&\sin{t_3}\cos{s_3} \end{pmatrix}\right|dt_1dt_2dt_3ds_1ds_2ds_3$$ The integrand can be expanded to $$\left|\cos(s_2)\sin(s_1)\sin(s_3)\sin(t_2)\sin(t_1 - t_3)- \sin(s_2)\big(\cos(s_1)\sin(s_3)\sin(t_1)\sin(t_2 - t_3) + \cos(s_3) \sin(s_1)\sin(t_3)\sin(t_1 - t_2)\big)\right|$$ The absolute value in the integrand and the integration over six variables seem to make it difficult to evaluate this integral to high precision. I am interested in the exact value of this number. Bürgisser and Lerario computed it to be $1.72$ rounded to two digits; I ran $10^{11}$ Monte Carlo evaluations to obtain $1.726225\dots$ with an estimated error of $7.3\cdot 10^{-6}$ My questions are: - Can the exact value of $\operatorname{edeg}G(2,4)$ be determined; is there perhaps a relation with other constants; is it, for example, algebraic over $\mathbb{Q}[\pi]$? - If this is too difficult, what are ways of evaluating the above integral to higher accuracy numerically? **Update**: In AdamP.Goucher's great answer, he provides more digits ($1.726230876$) and also uses a reformulation described by Matt F. in a comment to get an integrand without any absolute values: $$G(2,4) = 2^{-6} \int \dfrac{h\left((y-u)^2+(v-x)^2\right)^2}{\left((1+(u + (y-u)c - (v-x)h)^2)(1+(x + (v-x)c + (y-u)h)^2)\prod_{\alpha\in\{u,y,x,v\}}(1+\alpha^2)\right)^{3/2}}$$ where we integrate over $\mathbb{R}^5\times \mathbb{R}^+$ (and $h$ is the positive variable). Perhaps this form could come in handy for evaluating this integral to higher accuracy?! -------- **Update 2** The new formula from L.Mathis and Antonio Lerario is very useful for calculating digits! The following [mpmath][1] code can returns in less than $3$ minutes $1.7262312489219034885256331685361697650475579915479447$ (the last few digits might not be accurate) I expect to make that even much faster when solving the two integrals $F$ and $G$ symbolically first. import functools from mpmath import mp @functools.lru_cache(maxsize=1000) def F(u): return mp.quad(lambda phi: (u*mp.sin(phi)**2)/(mp.sqrt(mp.cos(phi)**2 + u**2*mp.sin(phi)**2)), [0, mp.pi/2]) @functools.lru_cache(maxsize=1000) def G(u): return mp.quad(lambda phi: (mp.sin(phi)**2)/(mp.sqrt(mp.sin(phi)**2 + u**2*mp.cos(phi)**2)), [0, mp.pi/2]) def H(u): return F(u)/G(u) def L(u): return F(u)*G(u) def integrand3(u): return L(u)**2*(1/H(u) - H(u))*mp.diff(H, u)/H(u) dps = 50 mp.dps = dps %time z = 3*mp.quad(integrand, [0,1]); z [1]: http://mpmath.org/