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I'm trying to get Mathematica to perform the convolution I need. I think it's fairly simple, just a convolution between a Normal distribution and a Uniform distribution on [-1,1]. A friend of mine mentioned using the delta function to do so but I'm not sure how to evaluate it correctly in Mathematica... Below is my attempt:

Integrate[PDF[NormalDistribution[μ, σ]][x-y](DiracDelta[# + 1] + DiracDelta[# - 1])/2&[y], 
 {y, -Infinity, Infinity}]

However, the output when I plot the solution seems readily wrong. I believe my problem is in how I'm implementing the DiracDelta. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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    $\begingroup$ Apparently this is a mis-interpretation of $[-1,1]$. It's an interval, right? Then you mean a uniform distribution on $[-1,1]$... so deltas are wrong. $\endgroup$
    – Jens
    Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 18:45
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    $\begingroup$ I'm not sure what is being asked. Is there some reason to believe that the result of the Integrate above is not correct? I get: (E^(-((1 + x - \[Mu])^2/(2 \[Sigma]^2))) + E^(-((1 - x + \[Mu])^2/( 2 \[Sigma]^2))))/(2 Sqrt[2 \[Pi]] \[Sigma]) and it seems to behave as expected. $\endgroup$
    – Daniel Lichtblau
    Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 23:57

1 Answer 1

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I would proceed as follows. Define a transformed distribution.

dist = TransformedDistribution[
   x + 2 y - 1, {x \[Distributed] NormalDistribution[μ, σ],
     y \[Distributed] BernoulliDistribution[1/2]}];

This has the expected properties

{Mean[dist], Variance[dist]}
(* {μ, 1 + σ^2} *)

and the PDF can be computed easily

PDF[dist, x]
(* (E^(-((1 + x - μ)^2/(2 σ^2))) + E^(-((1 - x + μ)^2/(
  2 σ^2))))/(2 Sqrt[2 π] σ) *)
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