A Concise Mathematical Description of Active Inference in Discrete Time
It offers a clearer explanation for researchers or practitioners struggling with the mathematical details of active inference, but it is incremental as it builds on existing literature without introducing new methods.
The paper provides a concise mathematical description of active inference in discrete time, serving as an introduction with a detailed example of action selection and including Python code for implementation.
In this paper we present a concise mathematical description of active inference in discrete time. The main part of the paper serves as a basic introduction to the topic, including a detailed example of the action selection mechanism. The appendix discusses the more subtle mathematical details, targeting readers who have already studied the active inference literature but struggle to make sense of the mathematical details and derivations. Throughout, we emphasize precise and standard mathematical notation, ensuring consistency with existing texts and linking all equations to widely used references on active inference. Additionally, we provide Python code that implements the action selection and learning mechanisms described in this paper and is compatible with pymdp environments.