# Quasi-Autoregressive Residual (QuAR) Flows

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.07419 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07419/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 16 Sep 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Generative Machine Learning for Multivariate Equity Returns](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.14735/) (2023)
- [Estimation of Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emissions via Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.04318/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Normalizing Flows are a powerful technique for learning and modeling probability distributions given samples from those distributions. The current state of the art results are built upon residual flows as these can model a larger hypothesis space than coupling layers. However, residual flows are extremely computationally expensive both to train and to use, which limits their applicability in practice. In this paper, we introduce a simplification to residual flows using a Quasi-Autoregressive (QuAR) approach. Compared to the standard residual flow approach, this simplification retains many of the benefits of residual flows while dramatically reducing the compute time and memory requirements, thus making flow-based modeling approaches far more tractable and broadening their potential applicability.