From the book "[Machine Learning a probabilistic Perspective][1]", I'm reading about finite/infinite mixture models. Particularly at paragraph 25.2.1 it's stated: > The usual representation (of a finite mixture model) is as follows: > > $p(x_i|z_i = k, \boldsymbol\theta) = p(x_i|\boldsymbol\theta_k)$ > > $p(z_i = k| \boldsymbol\pi = \pi_k) = \pi_k$ > > $p(\boldsymbol\pi|\alpha) =\text{Dir}(\boldsymbol\pi|(\alpha/K)\boldsymbol1_K)$ > > The form of $p(\boldsymbol\theta_k|\lambda)$ is chosen to be be > conjugate to $p(x_i|\boldsymbol\theta_k)$. We can write > $p(x_i|\boldsymbol\theta_k)$ as $\boldsymbol{x}_i \sim F(\boldsymbol\theta_{z_i})$ where F is the observation distribution. > Similarly, we can write $\boldsymbol\theta_k \sim H(\lambda)$, where H > is the prior. Now this modelling is quite confusing to me. What is the difference between $\boldsymbol\theta_k$ and $\boldsymbol\theta_{z_i}$? What is meant by "Observation distribution"? Can we apply EM algorithm to this model, how? [1]: https://amzn.to/2SL8qvh