High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In probability theory and statistics, the Rice distribution or Rician distribution, named after Stephen O. Rice, is a continuous probability distribution. In probability theory and statistics, the Rayleigh distribution is a continuous probability distribution. As an example of how it arises, the wind speed will have a Rayleigh distribution if the components of the two-dimensional wind velocity vector are uncorrelated and normally distributed with equal variance. The distribution is named after Lord Rayleigh.