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A comment on Ask HN: What companies are using probabilistic programming?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What companies are using probabilistic programming? by boltzmannbrain on Monday June 04, 2018 @10:52AM (#17228274)
Do you know of any details on how/why probabilistic programming is used over traditional methods? And why Stan? My assumption is b/c it's a legacy framework.
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Re:Ask HN: What companies are using probabilistic programming? by currymj on Monday June 04, 2018 @12:22PM (#17229424)
It's definitely not a legacy framework, it's very actively developed and improved.

A lot of very useful statistical models can't benefit from the GPU, and for them I think Stan is the better tool. There's a reason it's basically the default choice for people who want to use probabilistic programming for Bayesian statistics.

It's probably not the best tool for AI/ML type models. But for statisticians who want to use Bayesian methods it's close to perfect.

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Re:Ask HN: What companies are using probabilistic programming? by boltzmannbrain on Monday June 04, 2018 @04:50PM (#17232307)
Thanks that's good to know.

Haha I knew "legacy" would ruffle some feathers, by which I mean Stan was pretty much the first application-ready PPS on the block -- robust toolbox of methods, actively developed/supported.

The last slide of this presentation on SMC inference in PPLs is a nice view of the PPS landscape (not to mention the whole deck is a great intro by Lawrence Murray): http://www.it.uu.se/research/systems_and_control/education/2...

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Re:Ask HN: What companies are using probabilistic programming? by currymj on Monday June 04, 2018 @06:27PM (#17233211)
Yeah, I see what you're getting at now. And that is an excellent diagram.

I've never actually used BUGS or JAGS for anything but I would consider at least BUGS to truly be legacy software. To me the word "legacy" means you shouldn't pick it for a new project.

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Re:Ask HN: What companies are using probabilistic programming? by xitrium on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @12:20AM (#17234966)
GPU and MPI support in Stan coming hopefully this summer!
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