Objects arranged randomly in space: an accessible theory

This expository paper deals with many problems concerning bounded objects arranged randomly in space. The objects are of rather general shapes and sizes, whilst the random mechanisms for positioning and orienting them are also fairly general. There are no restrictions on the dependence between shapes, sizes, orientations and positions of objects. The only substantive assumption is that the objects are distributed in a .statistically uniform' way throughout the whole of the space. We focus on the statistical properties of features seen in an observation window, itself of general size and shape.