001 /*
002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
003 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
004 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
005 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
006 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
007 * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
008 *
009 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
010 *
011 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
012 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
013 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
014 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
015 * limitations under the License.
016 */
017 package org.apache.commons.math.distribution;
018
019 import org.apache.commons.math.MathException;
020
021 /**
022 * <p>Base interface for continuous distributions.</p>
023 *
024 * <p>Note: this interface will be extended in version 3.0 to include
025 * <br/><code>public double density(double x)</code><br/>
026 * that is, from version 3.0 forward, continuous distributions <strong>must</strong>
027 * include implementations of probability density functions. As of version
028 * 2.1, all continuous distribution implementations included in commons-math
029 * provide implementations of this method.</p>
030 *
031 * @version $Revision: 924362 $ $Date: 2010-03-17 17:45:31 +0100 (mer. 17 mars 2010) $
032 */
033 public interface ContinuousDistribution extends Distribution {
034
035 /**
036 * For this distribution, X, this method returns x such that P(X < x) = p.
037 * @param p the cumulative probability.
038 * @return x.
039 * @throws MathException if the inverse cumulative probability can not be
040 * computed due to convergence or other numerical errors.
041 */
042 double inverseCumulativeProbability(double p) throws MathException;
043 }