Mathematics for ML

Probability Distribution, explained

A probability distribution assigns probabilities to possible outcomes.
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Part of the Semantic Notion technical glossary.

Short Definition

A probability distribution assigns probabilities to possible outcomes.

Intuition

It describes what can happen and how likely each possibility is.

Technical Definition

A probability distribution is a function or measure that assigns nonnegative probabilities summing or integrating to one over a sample space.

Example

Softmax outputs a categorical distribution over possible next tokens.

Common Misunderstandings

A distribution is not the same as one sample from it.
Model probabilities may be poorly calibrated.

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