Variational Inference
Mean-field, stochastic VI, and normalizing-flow posteriors.
Variational Inference. Mean-field, stochastic VI, and normalizing-flow posteriors.
Recent technical contributions
A handful of recent papers carry the methodological frontier of variational inference forward. Variational Inference: A Review for Statisticians (Blei et al., 2017) is a primary reference for this area and develops new techniques or results that downstream work builds on.
Open methodological questions for variational inference include sharpening the bridges between foundational theory and computational practice, extending classical results to broader or more structured settings, and integrating the techniques surveyed above with adjacent mathematical disciplines. The references listed in this page are the entry points that current work builds on.
Prerequisites
Sources
- paper · primary · 2017blei-2017, kucukelbir-2017, mcauliffe-2017
In context
Where this topic sits in the prerequisite graph. Click any node to jump.
Review this topic
This page was drafted by an agent and is waiting on expert review. Spotted a wrong prerequisite, a missing concept, a misattributed source, or a factual slip? Tell us — your review opens a tracked issue maintainers act on.