AI Rookies

CRF — Conditional Random Field

Fact

A model that predicts labels by checking nearby labels too.

In Plain Words

CRF is like labeling kids in a school lunch line. It checks each kid, then checks if nearby name tags make sense.

It helps AI label each word in a sentence. You meet it in word splitting, grammar tags, and name finding.

Related Concepts

PGM
CRF is a discriminative PGM that predicts label probabilities directly.

Sequence Labeling
CRF is often used for Sequence Labeling, so nearby labels fit together.

HMM
CRF makes fewer independence assumptions than HMM and predicts labels directly.

NER
NER uses CRF to keep entity boundaries clear and smooth.