# What is temperature?
**URL:**
**Author:**  [@Kforcode](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Fu%2FKforcode)%5C
**Post date:** [November 17, 2021, 12:33am UTC](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Ft%2Fwhat-is-temperature%2F11924%2F1 "2021-11-17T00:33:32Z")
I see the word “temperature” being used at various places like:
1. in [Models — transformers 4.12.4 documentation](https://huggingface.co/transformers/main_classes/model.html?highlight=generate)
- **temperature** ( `float` , optional, defaults to 1.0) – The value used to module the next token probabilities.
1. temperature scaling for calibration
2. temperature of distillation
can anyone please explain what does it mean, or point me to a source with explanation?
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**Author:**  [@nielsr](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Fu%2Fnielsr)%5C
**Post date:** [November 17, 2021, 9:40am UTC](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Ft%2Fwhat-is-temperature%2F11924%2F2 "2021-11-17T09:40:29Z")
This is very well explained in [this Stackoverflow answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/63471046/7762882).
You can also check out our [blog post](https://huggingface.co/blog/how-to-generate) on generating text with Transformers, that also includes a description of the temperature.
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**Author:**  [@Kforcode](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Fu%2FKforcode)%5C
**Post date:** [November 17, 2021, 11:15am UTC](/static-proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.huggingface.co%2Ft%2Fwhat-is-temperature%2F11924%2F3 "2021-11-17T11:15:48Z")
Thanks a lot @nielsr