Probability distributions are extensively utilized in many areas of Computer Science such as Machine Learning, Information Retrieval and Databases. The computation of a probability distribution can be a difficult task because of the exponential size of the event space. As a consequence, researchers investigated methods for approximating probability distributions. This article provides a brief survey of the key research contributions to the design and the implementation of probability approximation methods. The article allows the reader to rapidly obtain relevant information which can effectively be utilized in research work.

中文翻译：

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概率分布近似的简要调查

概率分布广泛用于计算机科学的许多领域，例如机器学习，信息检索和数据库。由于事件空间的指数大小，因此概率分布的计算可能是一项艰巨的任务。结果，研究人员研究了近似概率分布的方法。本文简要概述了关键研究对概率近似方法的设计和实现的贡献。该文章使读者能够快速获取可以在研究工作中有效利用的相关信息。