difference between using max and length in histogram

What it the difference between using max and length in histogram?

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

Max of what? and length of what?

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

A=[1 2 10 3]

Try

max(A)  % The greatest value in A

and

length(A) % number of element in A

Answer 2

[Josh]

Thank you, that's what I thought. I was working a problem and the resulting histogram is the same whether I use max(X) or length(X) which did not make sense to me, but since I was creating a vector using X(i) = sum(rand > cumsum(p))+1, I suppose in this case max(X) and length(X) are the same.

[Image Analyst]

No. X(i) can be any integer value between 1 or and length(p)+1. Those values are independent of the max value of X since you could have different X(i). We don't know how long X is. For example, maybe X = [10, 30, 100, 4, 16], so length(X) = 5 while max(X) = 100. Rand is different for each i so that's why the values of X could be different for each i, and thus the max value is independent of the length, except in very coincidental cases.