# Tweedie Calculus

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.14486 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14486/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 15 Apr 2026.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Tweedie's Formulae and Diffusion Generative Models Beyond Gaussian](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19391/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Tweedie's formula, which under Gaussian noise expresses the posterior mean of a latent variable directly from the observed-data density, is a cornerstone of empirical Bayes and measurement-error analysis. No general theory, however, explains when analogous identities hold, how they are structured, or how to derive them for non-Gaussian noise and for posterior functionals other than the mean. This paper develops such a framework for additive-noise models. I characterize when conditional expectations of an unobserved latent variable, given the observed signal, admit direct expressions in terms of the observed density -- identities I call Tweedie representations -- and show that they are governed by a linear map, the Tweedie functional. Under general conditions, I prove that this functional exists, is unique, and is continuous. I provide a constructive method for its computation based on Fourier analysis: the functional is obtained by extending the inverse Fourier transform of an explicit tempered distribution. The theory yields posterior-mean formulas for non-Gaussian noise and provides new representations for nonlinear posterior functionals. Applications include Laplace mechanisms in differential privacy and heteroskedastic Gaussian sequence models in compound decision problems.