expected area of a triangle determined by randomly placed points Three points are placed at independently and at random in a unit square. What is the expected value of the area of the triangle formed by the three points?

Here's a perl script that confirms the answer Shai linked to via a Monte Carlo approach.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

$numTrials = 1000000 ;

sub distance {
   my $point1 = $_[0] ;
   my $point2 = $_[1] ;
   return sqrt(($x[$point1]-$x[$point2])**2 + ($y[$point1]-$y[$point2])**2) ;
}

sub heron {
   my $a = $legLength[$_[0]] ;
   my $b = $legLength[$_[1]] ;
   my $c = $legLength[$_[2]] ;
   my $s = ( $a + $b + $c ) / 2 ;
   return sqrt( $s * ( $s - $a ) * ( $s - $b ) * ( $s - $c ) ) ;
}

sub doAtriangle() {
   for ( my $j = 0; $j <= 2 ; $j++ ) {
      $x[$j] = rand(1) ;
      $y[$j] = rand(1) ;
   }   
   $legLength[0] = distance(0,1) ;
   $legLength[1] = distance(1,2) ;
   $legLength[2] = distance(2,0) ;
   return heron(0,1,2) ;   
}

for ( $i = 0 ; $i < $numTrials ; $i++ ) {
   $sum += doAtriangle() ;
}

print $sum/$numTrials . "\n" ;

