Variational AutoEncoders (VAE) for Tabular Data

The post of today is going to be a bit different. We have already talked about Variational Autoencoders (VAE) in the past, but today we are going to see how to implement it from scratch, train it on a dataset and see how it behaves with tabular data. Yes, VAEs can be used for tabular data as well. To do so, we will use the CRISP-DM framework to guide us through the process. ...

Date: December 21, 2025 · Estimated Reading Time: 20 min · Author: Oriol Alàs Cercós

From Words to Vectors: A Dive into Embedding Model Taxonomy

Embedding models are foundational in modern NLP, turning raw text into numerical vectors that preserve semantic significance. These representations power everything from semantic search to Retrieval-Augmented Generation or Prompt Engineering for LLM Agents. With growing demand for domain-specific applications, understanding which is the best fit for your system is more important than ever. Introduction In modern NLP, a text embedding is a vector that represents a piece of text in a mathematical space. The magic of embeddings is that they encode semantic meaning: texts with similar meaning end up with vectors that are close together. For example, an embedding model might place “How to change a tier” near “Steps to fix a flat tire” in its vector space, even though the wording is different. This property makes embedding models incredibly useful for tasks like search, clustering or recommendation, where we care about semantic similarity rather than exact keyword matches. By converting text into vectors, embedding models allow computers to measure meaning and relevance via distances in vector space. ...

Date: October 25, 2025 · Estimated Reading Time: 18 min · Author: Oriol Alàs Cercós