Contribution to cover C++11 functionality

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 30 November 2016 at 21:12:16 UTC, Ilya Yaroshenko 
wrote:
> "random distribution" is like "accidental distribution".

Not really.  I would use "randomly chosen distribution" for that.

> "random variable" is much more frequently used definition is 
> stats world (stats world != stats packages). Also this better 
> describes what functionality provides module. "Distribution" 
> may be used for PDF or for CDF (or their pair). "probability 
> distribution" and "random variable" looks better (IMHO) then 
> "random distribution", which has another meaning in stats 
> world: a distribution, which was chosen randomly from a class 
> of distributions. For example, variance-mean mixtures. --Ilya

"Random variable" is obviously the strict mathematical term, but 
there are a few reasons why "distribution" might be a better term 
to use in the API:

   * many users will not be statisticians; "distribution" is 
likely to be
     a more easily-understood term, while "variable" may confuse 
some users
     since it may be mixed up with 'variable' as in a program 
variable;

   * outside of mathematics many researchers use the term 
"distribution"
     quite casually and readily;

   * the C++11 standard calls these entities distributions, so 
calling the
     D functionality by similar names allows for easy 
understanding and
     adaptation.

(Strictly speaking the C++11 standard uses 'distribution' to 
refer to functors that take a source of uniformly-distributed 
random bits as input, and use that to generate variates with 
other statistical properties.)