MATLAB: Random noise vs. White/Gaussian noise

adaptivelmsMATLABnoiserand

I've been using this as my white noise so far,
s = (rand(N,1)-0.5)*2;
If I used one of MATLAB's noise functions what would be the difference?
The reason I ask is because I have to design and implement a basic adaptive filter using noise as the input source, but also having background noise as the noise that needs to be removed. It seemed counter-intuitive to have them as exactly the same types of noise.

Best Answer

rand() is a MATLAB random number generator. It generates random variables that follow a uniform probability distribution. randn() generates random numbers that follow a Gaussian distribution.
In the Statistics Toolbox, you have the ability to generate a wide variety of "noise" distributions.
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