[Numpy-discussion] Behavior of np.random.uniform

[Charles R Harris]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 10:36 AM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 5:27 PM, Charles R Harris <
> charlesr.harris at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
>
> > On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal <
> chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> >>
> >> What does the standard lib do for rand range? I see that randint Is
> closed on both ends, so order doesn't matter, though if it raises for b<a,
> then that's a precedent we could follow.
> >
> > randint is not closed on the high end. The now deprecated
> random_integers is the function that does that.
> >
> > For floats, it's good to have various interval options. For instance, in
> generating numbers that will be inverted or have their log taken it is good
> to avoid zero. However, the names 'low' and 'high' are misleading...
>
> They are correctly leading the users to the manner in which the author
> intended the function to be used. The *implementation* is misleading by
> allowing users to do things contrary to the documented intent. ;-)
>
> With floating point and general intervals, there is not really a good way
> to guarantee that the generated results avoid the "open" end of the
> specified interval or even stay *within* that interval. This function is
> definitely not intended to be used as `uniform(closed_end, open_end)`.
>

Well, it is possible to make that happen if one is careful or directly sets
the bits in ieee types...

Chuck
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