Average Distance Between Random Points on a Line Segment

Byron has already answered your question, but I will attempt to provide a detailed solution...

Let $X$ be a random variable uniformly distributed over $[0,L]$, i.e., the probability density function of $X$ is the following

$$f_X (x) = \begin{cases} \frac{1}{L} & \textrm{if} \quad{} x \in [0,L]\\ 0 & \textrm{otherwise}\end{cases}$$

Let us randomly pick two points in $[0,L]$ independently. Let us denote those by $X_1$ and $X_2$, which are random variables distributed according to $f_X$. The distance between the two points is a new random variable

$$Y = |X_1 - X_2|$$

Hence, we would like to find the expected value $\mathbb{E}(Y) = \mathbb{E}( |X_1 - X_2| )$. Let us introduce function $g$

$$g (x_1,x_2) = |x_1 - x_2| = \begin{cases} x_1 - x_2 & \textrm{if} \quad{} x_1 \geq x_2\\ x_2 - x_1 & \textrm{if} \quad{} x_2 \geq x_1\end{cases}$$

Since the two points are picked independently, the joint probability density function is the product of the pdf's of $X_1$ and $X_2$, i.e., $f_{X_1 X_2} (x_1, x_2) = f_{X_1} (x_1) f_{X_2} (x_2) = 1 / L^2$ in $[0,L] \times [0,L]$. Therefore, the expected value $\mathbb{E}(Y) = \mathbb{E}(g(X_1,X_2))$ is given by

$$\begin{align} \mathbb{E}(Y) &= \displaystyle\int_{0}^L\int_{0}^L g(x_1,x_2) \, f_{X_1 X_2} (x_1, x_2) \,d x_1 \, d x_2\\[6pt] &= \frac{1}{L^2} \int_0^L\int_0^L |x_1 - x_2| \,d x_1 \, d x_2\\[6pt] &= \frac{1}{L^2} \int_0^L\int_0^{x_1} (x_1 - x_2) \,d x_2 \, d x_1 + \frac{1}{L^2} \int_0^L\int_{x_1}^L (x_2 - x_1) \,d x_2 \, d x_1\\[6pt] &= \frac{L^3}{6 L^2} + \frac{L^3}{6 L^2} = \frac{L}{3}\end{align}$$

Sorry. I posted a cryptic comment just before running off to class. What I meant was that if $X,Y$ are independent uniform $(0,1)$ random variables, then the triple $$(A,B,C):=(\min(X,Y),\ \max(X,Y)-\min(X,Y),\ 1-\max(X,Y))$$ is an exchangeable sequence. In particular, $\mathbb{E}(A)=\mathbb{E}(B)=\mathbb{E}(C),$ and since $A+B+C=1$ identically we must have $\mathbb{E}(B)=\mathbb{E}(\mbox{distance})={1\over 3}.$

Intuitively, the "average" configuration of two random points on a interval looks like this:

Without loss of generality, let the interval length be L and the sought average difference D.

The answer is seen to be D=L/3 by the following simple argument: Select 3 random values a,b,c on the interval of length L. The probability that c is between a and b equals 1/3 since the other equiprobable alternatives are that a or b are in the middle. Since the interval length is L, the probability must also be D/L, thus D=L/3.