Could be, but it is also possible I'm missing something somewhere, especially because I can't explain why min(random(), random()) looks different from random(random()) or random()*random().
random(random()) has an identical distribution to random()*random() (it may even behave identically for a given rng state), although this is different to Math.pow(random(),2) since in that case there's 100% correlation between both parts which makes the expected value product bigger.
random(random()) is also distributed equivalently to
x=random()
y=random()
while(y>=x) y=random()
return min(x,y)
Another intuitive rephrasing is that while both min(random(), random()) and random(random()) are guaranteed to be at most your first draw, with random(random()) your second draw is constrained to be within the interval of your first, whereas with min(random(), random()) there's no such constraint on the second draw. Thinking about P(x > y); x,y~U should then provide the illumination.
Product: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/659254/product-dist...
Minimum: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/220/how-is-the-min...
I can't explain it either, but I also don't think there is a reason they should look the same.