In probability theory and statistics, the continuous uniform distributions or rectangular distributions are a family of symmetric probability distributions. Such a distribution describes an experiment where there is an arbitrary outcome that lies between certain bounds. The bounds are defined by the parameters, a {\displaystyle a} and b , {\displaystyle b,} which are the minimum and maximum values. The interval can either be closed (i.e. [ a , b ] {\displaystyle [a,b]} ) or open (i.e. ( a , b ) {\displaystyle (a,b)} ). Therefore, the distribution is often abbreviated U ( a , b ) , {\displaystyle U(a,b),} where U {\displaystyle U} stands for uniform distribution. The difference between the bounds defines the interval length; all intervals of the same length on the distribution's support are equally probable. It is the maximum entropy probability distribution for a random variable X {\displaystyle X} under no constraint other than that it is contained in the distribution's support.