Rename `Range` to `Uniform`

[vks]

I think the Range distribution should be renamed to Uniform. The uniform distribution necessarily has a minimum and a maximum and this is the correct statistical term.

[pitdicker]

Can you also give a few reasons why we may want to keep the name Range?

[vks]

The only reason I can think of is backwards compatibility. We might want to keep reexported type aliases that are deprecated. (We still support SampleRange for instance.) I don't think Range is used by anyone else to describe the uniform (or any other) distribution.

[pitdicker]

Range is a very common term in programming, and in Rust with the standard library. I believe there are much more people solving common programming tasks that just require some value in a certain range. Much more than there are uses for values that fill a complete u32/64, and much more than there are people using Range for statistical problems.

[vks]

Fair enough, we don't have to touch gen_range.

However, calling the uniform distribution Range is IMHO misleading and confusing. No other statistics library I know does that. I don't think we should invent non-conventional names for statistical distributions. Uniform is more precise, because numbers from a range can be drawn non-uniformly (akin to WeightedChoice).

[dhardy]

One argument for this change is to reduce confusion in #382.

It sounds overall sensible and Huon suggested it (possibly he wasn't the only one; I don't remember).

[dhardy]

PR is open: #395; further discussion can go there.