In probability theory and statistics, the continuous uniform distribution or rectangular distribution is a family of symmetric probability distributions. The distribution describes an experiment where there is an arbitrary outcome that lies between certain bounds. The bounds are defined by the parameters, a and b, which are the minimum and maximum values. The interval can either be closed (e.g. [a, b]) or open (e.g. (a, b)). Therefore, the distribution is often abbreviated U (a, b), where 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 under no constraint other than that it is contained in the distribution's support.