Notation

This note contains the notations/terms used in different contexts so as to be consistent.

General

Note titles:

  • In Title Case, see here.
  • Should contain plural form unless referring to specific instance, e.g. Multi-Armed Bandits (MABs) instead of Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB), and Kalman Filter instead of Kalman Filters.
  • For things with multiple names, look into roam aliases.

Lists:

  • For things like properties, state the name followed by the mathematical description, then any conditions it should satisfy. E.g. =Associativity: \((a+b)+c=a+(b+c)\) assuming finite \(a,b,c\).

Content:

  • For things with multiple names, do the following, e.g. Contextual bandits (also called associative search)... where the first name is the one you see used most commonly/used by leading researchers.
  • Fullstop after each sentence, even in lists.
  • When listing names of mathematical properties, put their names in parentheses after stating it in math e.g. \(\x \in \mathcal{X},x\geq 0\) (Non-negativity).

Math/LaTeX:

  • Argmax/min written using math text e.g. \(\text{argmax}\).

Reinforcement Learning

  • Uppercase for random variables, lowercase for outcomes.
  • (Experimental) Hat notation for estimates of e.g. Q functions.
  • State-value instead of State value.

Bayesian statistics

  • Unnormalized densities have a tilde, e.g. \(\tilde{\pi}\)
  • Normalizing constant of density \(p\) is denoted \(Z_p\).

Emacs 29.4 (Org mode 9.6.15)