Dunif and Punif
On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 8:49 AM, michele donato <michele.donato at wayne.edu> wrote:
Hi,
I am trying to use dunif and runif
however, I have two problems:
if I do
dunif(1:10, min=1, max=10)
I get 10 values, which summed give me 1.1111
I understand that the probability is computed as f(x) = 1 / (max-min)
but in this case it looks wrong: I have 10 values, each one
equiprobable, and the probability for each one should be 0.1 and not
0.11111 (which is, consistently with the definition, 1/9)
It looks like one of the extremes is not considered in the computation
of the probability, but then it's assigned a probability anyway.
Similar problem with punif.
if I do
punif(1, min=1, max=10)
I get 0 as result, as if the lower extreme is not considered, which is
not consistent with the description where min <= x <= max
If the lower extreme is not considered because cdf(x) = p(X<x) ? {and
not p(X<=x)} the problem stands in p(X<11) which should be the sum of
everything. ( P(1) + P(2) + ... + P(10) )
What is happening here?
The uniform distribution is continuous. Your interval has length 9 (10-1 = 9), so the density 1/9. Multiplied by 10 it gives you your answer. Same for the cumulative probability distribution (punif) - it is zero at x=1 because that's where your interval starts. Peter