  We build a new probability measure on closed space and plane polygons. The
key construction is a map, given by Knutson and Hausmann using the Hopf map on
quaternions, from the complex Stiefel manifold of 2-frames in n-space to the
space of closed n-gons in 3-space of total length 2. Our probability measure on
polygon space is defined by pushing forward Haar measure on the Stiefel
manifold by this map. A similar construction yields a probability measure on
plane polygons which comes from a real Stiefel manifold.
  The edgelengths of polygons sampled according to our measures obey beta
distributions. This makes our polygon measures different from those usually
studied, which have Gaussian or fixed edgelengths. One advantage of our
measures is that we can explicitly compute expectations and moments for
chordlengths and radii of gyration. Another is that direct sampling according
to our measures is fast (linear in the number of edges) and easy to code.
  Some of our methods will be of independent interest in studying other
probability measures on polygon spaces. We define an edge set ensemble (ESE) to
be the set of polygons created by rearranging a given set of n edges. A key
theorem gives a formula for the average over an ESE of the squared lengths of
chords skipping k vertices in terms of k, n, and the edgelengths of the
ensemble. This allows one to easily compute expected values of squared
chordlengths and radii of gyration for any probability measure on polygon space
invariant under rearrangements of edges.
