Estimating the rate-distortion function of real-world data, part 1
What is the rate-distortion function, and why we may care about it.

The Ill-defined Problem of Maximum Likelihood Estimation
Why we use maximum likelihood for density estimation, when it breaks down (especially on real-world data), and what can be done about it.

Linear Regression as Conditional Random Field
Classical linear regression simply uses a linear Gaussian model (CRF).

Gibbs Sampling in Pairwise Markov Networks
Discrete pairwise Markov networks are pretty straightforward to work with analytically. Let's use the canonical overcomplete representation, where the sufficient statistics functions are indicator functions …