I made joint_histgram component and did little modify on existing components. It is seem to a component can not depend on many other components. In the following example, enabling switch #define USE_ACC_MIN_MAX_IN_ACC_DENSITY 1 causes compile err in MSVC8 How to use more depended components? usage:: #define USE_ACC_MIN_MAX_IN_ACC_DENSITY 0 #include <boost/accumulators/statistics/density.hpp> #include <boost/accumulators/statistics/joint_histogram.hpp> namespace accumulators = boost::accumulators; double ddd=0.0; accumulators::accumulator_set<double , accumulators::stats< accumulators::tag::joint_histogram< double , accumulators::tag::covariate1> > >acc( accumulators::sample_cache_size=200 ,accumulators::density_num_bins=50 ,accumulators::sample = ddd ,accumulators::covariate1 = ddd ); // two random number generators boost::lagged_fibonacci607 rng; boost::normal_distribution<> mean_sigma(0,1); boost::variate_generator<boost::lagged_fibonacci607&, boost::normal_distribution<> > normal(rng, mean_sigma); int n=100000; for (std::size_t i=0; i<n; ++i) { double d1=normal()*normal(); acc(normal(), accumulators::covariate1 = d1); } boost::numeric::ublas::matrix<double > jointhist; jointhist = accumulators::joint_histogram(acc); std::cout << jointhist<< std::endl;