Number series with uniform distribution for a given variance and a mean in matlab

Question

I want to generate n number of points using a uniform distribution for a specific variance (v) and mean (m).

I'm currently using MATLAB to achieve this task. This can be done for a normal distribution using y = v.*randn(n,1) + m;

Is there any straightforward method to do this in MATLAB?

Answer 1

For uniform distribution use rand (randn is for normal distribution).

rand generates numbers uniformly distributed on the interval (0,1), so the mean is 0.5 and the variance is 1/12. To get different mean or variance you need to shift and scale:

desired_mean = 3;
desired_var = 5;
N = 1e6; % number of samples
x = sqrt(12*desired_var) * (rand(1,N)-0.5) + desired_mean;

Check:

>> mean(x)
ans =
   3.003083912414557
>> var(x)
ans =
   4.998928353933906