Practical Probabilistic Programming, Avi Pfeffer

Summary

Practical Probabilistic Programming

introduces the working programmer to probabilistic programming. In it, you'll learn how to use the PP paradigm to model application domains and then express those probabilistic models in code. Although PP can seem abstract, in this book you'll immediately work on practical examples, like using the Figaro language to build a spam filter and applying Bayesian and Markov networks, to diagnose computer system data problems and recover digital images.

About the Technology

The data you accumulate about your customers, products, and website users can help you not only to interpret your past, it can also help you predict your future! Probabilistic programming uses code to draw probabilistic inferences from data. By applying specialized algorithms, your programs assign degrees of probability to conclusions. This means you can forecast future events like sales trends, computer system failures, experimental outcomes, and many other critical concerns.

About the Book

Practical Probabilistic Programming

introduces the working programmer to probabilistic programming. In this book, you’ll immediately work on practical examples like building a spam filter, diagnosing computer system data problems, and recovering digital images. You’ll discover probabilistic inference, where algorithms help make extended predictions about issues like social media usage. Along the way, you’ll learn to use functional-style programming for text analysis, object-oriented models to predict social phenomena like the spread of tweets, and open universe models to gauge real-life social media usage. The book also has chapters on how probabilistic models can help in decision making and modeling of dynamic systems.

What's Inside

Introduction to probabilistic modeling

Writing probabilistic programs in Figaro

Building Bayesian networks

Predicting product lifecycles

Decision-making algorithms

About the Reader

This book assumes no prior exposure to probabilistic programming. Knowledge of Scala is helpful.

About the Author

Avi Pfeffer

is the principal developer of the Figaro language for probabilistic programming.

Table of Contents

PART 1 INTRODUCING PROBABILISTIC PROGRAMMING AND FIGARO

Probabilistic programming in a nutshell

A quick Figaro tutorial

Creating a probabilistic programming application

PART 2 WRITING PROBABILISTIC PROGRAMS

Probabilistic models and probabilistic programs

Modeling dependencies with Bayesian and Markov networks

Using Scala and Figaro collections to build up models

Object-oriented probabilistic modeling

Modeling dynamic systems

PART 3 INFERENCE

The three rules of probabilistic inference

Factored inference algorithms

Sampling algorithms

Solving other inference tasks

Dynamic reasoning and parameter learning

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