[JKCalhoun]

> 2) probability is rarely truly uncorrelated

Without having fully digested how the Unsure Calculator computes, it seems to me you could perhaps "weight" the ranges you pass to the calculator. Rather than a standard bell curve the Calculator could apply a more tightly focused — or perhaps skewed curve for that term.

If you think your salary will be in the range of 10 to 20, but more likely closer to 10 you could:

10<~20 (not to be confused with less-than)

or: 10!~20 (not to be confused with factorial)

or even: 10~12~20 to indicate a range of 10 to 20 ... leaning toward 12.

[roughly]

The correlation in this case isn't about the distribution for the individual event, it's about the interactions between them - so, for instance, Rent could be anywhere between 1200 and 1800, and Food could be anywhere between 100 and 150, but if Rent is 1200, it means Food is more likely to be 100, and if Food is 150, it means Rent is more likely to be 1800. Basically, there's a shared factor that's influencing both (local cost of living) that's the actual thing you need to model.

So, a realistic modeling isn't 1200~1500 + 100~150, it's (1~1.5)*(1200 + 150) - the "cost of living" distribution applies to both factors.