[STATISTICS-48] Remove isSupportConnected from the distribution interfaces

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Trivial
• Resolution: Implemented
• Affects Version/s: 1.0
• Fix Version/s: 1.0
• Component/s: distribution
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Alex Herbert
• Created: 14/Nov/21 17:43
• Updated: 06/Dec/22 11:30
• Resolved: 15/Dec/21 10:17

Description

Both the discrete and continuous distribution have a property in the interface:

    /**
     * Indicates whether the support is connected, i.e. whether
     * all values between the lower and upper bound of the support
     * are included in the support.
     *
     * @return whether the support is connected.
     */
    boolean isSupportConnected();

This is only ever true for all distributions.

The functions dates back as far as Commons Math 2 with no apparent use.

There is no facility to determine what values within the support are not valid. So
the property isSupportConnect alone cannot be used to determine if the
value you are interested in is part of the support. E.g. This would require
a isSupported(double x) method for continuous distributions.

I propose to remove this unused property from the distribution
interfaces prior to the initial 1.0 release to avoid this redundant
method.

Issue Links

• is related to: MATH-699 inverseCumulativeDistribution fails with cumulative distribution having a plateau
• is related to: MATH-1636 Remove "isSupportedConnected" method