Comment by omoikane
5 days ago
If I am reading this right, a range is expressed as a distance between the minimum and maximum values, and in the Monte Carlo part a number is generated from a uniform distribution within that range[1].
But if I just ask the calculator "1~2" (i.e. just a range without any operators), the histogram shows what looks like a normal distribution centered around 1.5[2].
Shouldn't the histogram be flat if the distribution is uniform?
[1] https://github.com/filiph/unsure/blob/123712482b7053974cbef9...
Under the "Limitations" section:
> Range is always a normal distribution, with the lower number being two standard deviations below the mean, and the upper number two standard deviations above. Nothing fancier is possible, in terms of input probability distributions.
Part of the confusion here is likely that the tool, as seen on the web, probably lags significantly behind the code. I've started using a related but different tool (https://filiph.github.io/napkin/).
The HN mods gave me an opportunity to resubmit the link, so I did. If I had more time, I'd have also upgraded the tool to the latest version and fix the wording. But unfortunately, I didn't find the time to do this.
Apologies for the confusion!