Bayesian deep learning, frozen in 2018 amber
A Moscow summer school's seminar notebooks, still runnable via Binder, preserving how researchers taught variational inference before the transformer era.

What it does This repo holds the Jupyter notebooks from DeepBayes 2018, a summer school on Bayesian methods in deep learning held in Moscow. The materials cover variational inference and related topics, packaged with a Binder link so you can still execute them without wrestling with six-year-old dependency hell.
The interesting bit Academic course repos usually rot fast; the Binder badge here is a small act of archival defiance. It also captures a specific pedagogical moment—how Bayesian neural networks were taught before the field narrowed toward point estimates at scale.
Key highlights
- 1,045 stars suggest these notebooks found an audience well beyond the 2018 attendees
- Topics tagged: bayesian, deep-learning, variational-inference
- Runnable via mybinder.org without local setup
- Hosted by the Bayesian Methods Research Group (BayesGroup), HSE Moscow
- Companion site at deepbayes.ru (status unknown; sources don’t clarify)
Caveats
- README is minimal: no syllabus, no instructor list, no dependency manifest beyond what Binder infers
- The deepbayes.ru link’s current state is unclear from the sources
- Six years old in a fast-moving field; some techniques may feel dated
Verdict Worth a look if you’re teaching or learning variational inference and want battle-tested notebook examples. Skip if you need state-of-the-art implementations or a structured curriculum with solutions.