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Confused by qλ(z) #25

Open robz opened 3 years ago

robz commented 3 years ago

Reading the following paragraphs in the VAE notes:

Next, we introduce a variational family Q of distributions that approximate the true, but intractable posterior p(z∣x). Further henceforth, we will assume a parameteric setting where any distribution in the model family Px,z is specified via a set of parameters θ∈Θ and distributions in the variational family Q are specified via a set of parameters λ∈Λ. Given Px,z and Q, we note that the following relationships hold true1 for any x and all variational distributions qλ(z)∈Q

If "qλ(z)" is intended to approximate the distribution "p(z∣x)", then I'm confused as to why "qλ(z)" doesn't include "x". Should it be "qλ(z∣x)", or it is actually approximating the distribution "p(z)"?

Apologies if this sounds like an ignorant question--my understanding of probability notation isn't too sharp.