tfc.distributions.lower_tail

Approximates lower tail quantile for range coding.

For range coding of random variables, the distribution tails need special handling, because range coding can only handle alphabets with a finite number of symbols. This method returns a cut-off location for the lower tail, such that approximately tail_mass probability mass is contained in the tails (together). The tails are then handled by using the 'overflow' functionality of the range coder implementation (using an Elias gamma code).

distributionA tfp.distributions.Distribution object.
tail_massFloat between 0 and 1. Desired probability mass for the tails.

A tf.Tensor broadcastable to shape self.batch_shape containing the approximate lower tail quantiles for each scalar distribution.