Note: this is fixed in version 9. ---- My question concerns the usage of `NExpectation` and `Expectation` and why I see the behavior I see in the following example. First take some data and derive an `EmpiricalDistribution`: data = {4, 104, 96, 80, 22, 76, 106, 18, 98, 44, 112, 78, 50, 120, 2, 6, 100, 10, 68, 80, 42, 66, 100, 58, 4, 76, 18, 102, 6, 16, 52, 32, 62, 36, 18, 4, 54, 98, 38, 74, 16, 22, 102, 2, 2, 4, 22, 72, 100, 82, 48, 16, 34, 44, 130, 50, 48, 74, 60, 96, 8, 118, 30, 58, 84, 4, 70, 66, 40, 14, 92, 68, 42, 56, 56, 16, 40, 12, 22, 26, 98, 4, 80, 100, 36, 88, 48, 26, 28, 94, 22, 26, 78, 16, 52, 8, 10, 2}; dist = EmpiricalDistribution[data]; You can plot `PDF`s and `CDF`s of the distribution: Row[{DiscretePlot[PDF[dist, x], {x, data}, Joined -> True, ImageSize -> 300], DiscretePlot[CDF[dist, x], {x, 0, Max@data, 1}, Joined -> True, ImageSize -> 300]}] They look like this: ![PDF & CDF plots][1] That covers the background. Now execute the following and it gets a little odd: Expectation[X \[Conditioned] X > 4, X \[Distributed] dist] NExpectation[X \[Conditioned] X > 4, X \[Distributed] dist] N[Expectation[X \[Conditioned] X > 4, X \[Distributed] dist]] 620/11 NExpectation[X \[Conditioned] X > 4, X \[Distributed]DataDistribution[<<"Empirical">>, {51}]] 56.3636 So, what gives? How come `NExpectation[...]` doesn't calculate an answer, but `N[Expectation[...]]` does? Clearly, `Expectation` handles `EmpiricalDistribution` without a problem. One would think that `NExpectation` would as well. Doesn't this seem odd? Just hoping that understanding why Mathematica does this might yield additional insights into Mathematica itself. [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/ft7hC.png