[Feature Request] Unify Support syntax for all Distributions #222

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1. bvenn commented on Jul 19, 2023

   

   bvenn

   on Jul 19, 2023

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   I think the best way to model the support is to use FSharp.Stats.Inverval<'a>. Intervals support generic type inputs, therefore even multidimensional distributions would be covered.
2. smoothdeveloper commented on Jul 19, 2023

   

   smoothdeveloper

   on Jul 19, 2023

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   FSharp.Stats/src/FSharp.Stats/Intervals.fs

   Lines 7 to 9 in 7de8b82

   	type Interval<'a> =
   	| ClosedInterval of 'a * 'a
   	| Empty

   We may consider having static member (for overloads) or at least the first one:

   ofTuple: ('a * 'a) -> Interval<'a>
   ofTuple: ('a * 'a) option -> Interval<'a>

   Should the implementation do a comparison in case the values are swapped, and what should occur if they are?

   Also, may be useful to offer the reverse:

   toTuple: 'a Interval -> ('a * 'a) option

   If the type is meant only for closed interval (rather than a larger set of those), maybe it is better to just name it ClosedInterval also.
3. bvenn commented on Jul 19, 2023

   

   bvenn

   on Jul 19, 2023

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   Totally agree to the ofTuple and toTuple member:+1:

   I'm not sure if in any case it is allowed to have endValue < startValue. I dont't think so and therefore I would add a check that fails if the input is meaningless.

   It may be an option to update the Interval type with a Type property that sets if the interval is closed/halfopen_right/halfopen_left/open.
4. bvenn

   added a commit that references this issue on Jul 21, 2023

   add interval tuple properties

   ...

   0ddb8b7
5. github-actions

   added

   refactor

   on Mar 23, 2026
6. github-actions commented on Apr 24, 2026

   

   github-actionsBot

   on Apr 24, 2026 – with GitHub Actions

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   🤖 This is an automated response from Repo Assist.

   This is a good consistency improvement. The current state is:

   • Bernoulli — returns a list of supported values ([0; 1])
   • Hypergeometric (and several other discrete distributions) — returns a tuple (min, max)
   • Continuous distributions generally don't expose Support at all

   The direction discussed above (use FSharp.Stats.Interval<'a>) seems right. Interval<'a> already exists in the library and represents a closed [start, end] range, which is the natural representation for a continuous support. For discrete distributions the interval would represent the integer range and callers would know the step is 1.

   A concrete migration path:

   1. Add ofTuple: ('a * 'a) -> Interval<'a> and toTuple: Interval<'a> -> ('a * 'a) helpers to Interval (discussed here).
   2. Change all Support members to return Interval<float> (or Interval<int> for purely-integer discrete distributions).
   3. For distributions with a single-point support (edge cases like a degenerate distribution) an Interval still works: Interval(v, v).

   For distributions with non-contiguous support (e.g. Bernoulli, which only takes values {0, 1} but not 0.5) the Interval abstraction is a slight over-approximation, but it is still useful for bounding purposes and is consistent with how most statistics libraries handle this.

   This is a breaking change for any code currently calling the tuple-returning Support members, so it would need a major version bump or a deprecation cycle. Flagging for maintainer awareness.

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