Daniel_Burfoot comments on Church: a language for probabilistic modeling - Less Wrong

18 [deleted] 22 October 2010 11:59AM

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Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 24 October 2010 09:34:54PM 1 point [-]

you usually code both model and inference algorithm and make use of problem-specific approximations to Bayesian inference. Probabilistic programs separate model from inference by using universal inference algorithms.

Naively, separation of model from inference algorithm seems like a terrible idea. People use problem-specific approximation algorithms because if they don't exploit specific features of the model, inference will be completely intractable. Often this consideration is so important that people will use obviously sub-optimal models, if those models support fast inference.

Comment author: andreas 24 October 2010 11:03:10PM 0 points [-]

Yes, deriving mechanisms that take complex models and turn them into something tractable is mostly an open problem.