1. typically, latent variable 存在于mixture model中
2. 分为discrete latent variable 和 continuous latent variable
3. 相当于indicator,为了便于计算而引入,每个observation data corresponds to a latent variable
4. p(x) = sigma_p(x|z)p(z), latent varible 可以marginalise掉, 即p(x)可以factoriize depending on p(z)