Research map / Probabilistic and scientific modeling / Variational and generative sampling
Exact inference for probabilistic programs
Performs exact or scalable inference in discrete and mixed probabilistic programs.
103 accepted papers at ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR and AAAI (2016–2026) · an approach in Variational and generative sampling, keyword cluster “estimation · probabilistic · variables”
State History Tried Preprints Who Export
Where it stands
Not enough benchmark data Fewer than four papers report the same benchmark, so there is no record to follow.
22 papers in 2023–24 and 13 in 2025–26 (at ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR and AAAI); its share of the topic shrank, from 5.3% to 2.6%.
How this is decided
A benchmark is tracked when at least four papers of this approach report their own method on the same dataset and metric in at least two different years. Its record is the best number reported up to 2024 compared with the best reported in 2025–26: still improving means at least 1% better, flat means at most 0.2% better with at least two papers from 2025–26 trying. Numbers on a different scale from the rest (a fraction among percentages) and far outliers are left out. Results come from different papers with different setups, so they are signals, not head-to-head comparisons. The share of papers is counted at ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR and AAAI.
How it got here
Most cited paper of each year
- 2016 · Fast ε-free Inference of Simulation Models with Bayesian Conditional Density Estimation (NeurIPS 2016 · 141 citations)
- 2017 · Deep Probabilistic Programming (ICLR 2017 · 110 citations)
- 2018 · A Likelihood-Free Inference Framework for Population Genetic Data using Exchangeable Neural Networks (NeurIPS 2018 · 86 citations)
- 2019 · Automatic Posterior Transformation for Likelihood-Free Inference (ICML 2019 · 69 citations)
- 2020 · Einsum Networks: Fast and Scalable Learning of Tractable Probabilistic Circuits (ICML 2020 · 26 citations)
- 2021 · A Compositional Atlas of Tractable Circuit Operations for Probabilistic Inference (NeurIPS 2021 · 9 citations)
- 2022 · DeepStochLog: Neural Stochastic Logic Programming (AAAI 2022 · 37 citations)
- 2023 · Planning with Hidden Parameter Polynomial MDPs (AAAI 2023 · 7 citations)
- 2024 · Colour Passing Revisited: Lifted Model Construction with Commutative Factors (AAAI 2024 · 4 citations)
- 2025 · Structural Entropy Guided Probabilistic Coding (AAAI 2025 · 4 citations)
- 2026 · ProbMoE: Differentiable Probabilistic Routing for Mixture-of-Experts (ICML 2026 · 0 citations)
Earliest papers here
- Fast ε-free Inference of Simulation Models with Bayesian Conditional Density Estimation (NeurIPS 2016 · 141 citations)
- PHOG: Probabilistic Model for Code (ICML 2016 · 111 citations)
- Approximate Probabilistic Inference via Word-Level Counting (AAAI 2016 · 39 citations)
What has been tried
94 papers here report 762 measured changes (a component added, removed or swapped, compared with a baseline): helped 68%, no clear effect 9%, hurt 16%, mixed 7%. Papers mostly publish changes that helped, so "helped" is over-represented.
Ablations in recent papers
| What was changed | Measured on | Result | Effect | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Add structural entropy regularization | Classification tasks (10 datasets) · Average macro metric (%) | 59.82 -> 62.23 | Helped | Structural Entropy Guided Probabilistic Coding (AAAI 2025 · 4 citations) |
| Increase CMPE sampling from 2 to 30 steps | Tumor spheroid growth · RMSE | 0.616 -> 0.577 | Helped | Consistency Models for Scalable and Fast Simulation-Based Inference (NeurIPS 2024 · 2 citations) |
| combine both types of latents rather than use only monotone or only squared circuits | ImageNet32 · bpd | null | Helped | On the Relationship Between Monotone and Squared Probabilistic Circuits (AAAI 2025 · 1 citation) |
| Use MPE in the true joint key posterior instead of marginal-based MAR | AES-128 validation, ε = 0 · top-1 success rate | 67.37 % -> 67.61 % | Helped | Exact Soft Analytical Side-Channel Attacks using Tractable Circuits (ICML 2024 · 1 citation) |
| add ULW propagation | SMC instance with threshold 10^6 · runtime speedup | 10 times | Helped | Solving Satisfiability Modulo Counting Exactly with Probabilistic Circuits (ICML 2025 · 0 citations) |
| Use fewer prior samples for the min-min objective | Cal500 · F1 | Helped | Joint Learning of Energy-based Models and their Partition Function (ICML 2025 · 0 citations) | |
| amortize multiple DAG orders instead of learning conditionals for a single DAG | MNIST · wall-clock convergence | No clear effect | Delta-AI: Local objectives for amortized inference in sparse graphical models (ICLR 2024 · 0 citations) | |
| Use a categorical encoding rather than the binary linear-arithmetic encoding | Visual Sudoku · runtime | Helped | A Fast Convoluted Story: Scaling Probabilistic Inference for Integer Arithmetics (NeurIPS 2024 · 0 citations) | |
| Use constrained projection optimization instead of unconstrained optimization | Graph datasets · Dasgupta cost | Helped | Expected Probabilistic Hierarchies (NeurIPS 2024 · 0 citations) | |
| Use GUIDE teacher-student training instead of SSMP training | PCs · log-likelihood score | 60% | Helped | A Neural Network Approach for Efficiently Answering Most Probable Explanation Queries in Probabilistic Models (NeurIPS 2024 · 0 citations) |
Recent preprints
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Who publishes on it
Institutions on the most papers of this approach since 2023 (of 35 papers; from OpenAlex and the papers' affiliations).
- Purdue University · 3 papers
- University of California, Los Angeles · 3 papers
- University of Edinburgh · 3 papers
- University of Oxford · 2 papers
- University of Texas at Dallas · 2 papers
- Örebro University · 2 papers
- Google · 2 papers
Use it
Download BibTeX of 40 key papersOpen the topic in the interactive map
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Related approaches
Same keyword cluster
- Likelihood-free and graphical model estimation (161 papers)
- Tractable probabilistic models (90 papers)
- Latent variable marginalization and estimators (91 papers)
- Gradient estimation for discrete variables (74 papers)
- Mutual information estimation (27 papers)
Elsewhere in the topic
- Flow matching and flow sampling (144 papers)
- Posterior sampling with diffusion guidance (137 papers)
- Score-based generative modeling analysis (128 papers)
- Structured latent VAEs (125 papers)
- Disentangled and discrete latent models (92 papers)
- Variational inference theory and gradients (89 papers)
- Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (89 papers)
- Regularizing VAE latent information (89 papers)
Benchmark numbers, ablations and baseline numbers are extracted by AI from each paper's full text and can be wrong; the paper is the authority. Data: results index of 2026-11-02, citation counts from OpenAlex (2026-10-09).