Equation 21 · Part 10 · From BM25 to Agentic Retrieval: A History of Retrieval-Augmented Generation
subscript
subscript
What this part means
The lower label selects a particular version, component, or indexed member of the quantity. For example, x₀ and xₜ can be values at different positions.
Its job in the formula
A subscript distinguishes a version, component, step, or member of a quantity. It does not automatically mean multiplication.
Full expression→subscript→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
By the time Lewis and colleagues published in 2020, learned dense retrieval and large pretrained generators both already existed as separate lines of work. The paper’s specific technical contribution was neither — it was making the whole pipeline trainable end to end through a single differentiable objective, treating the retrieved passage as a latent variable to be marginalized over rather than a fixed input handed to a frozen reader [ 8 ] . Writing x for the input, y for the output, z for a retrieved passage, and and for the retriever’s and generator’s parameters respectively, the RAG-Sequence variant approximates . holding a single retrieved passage fixed…
Learn the underlying idea
A subscript is a label attached below a symbol. It often selects a time step, component, category, or member of a sequence.
Open the illustrated subscripts: which member of a family? guide →
Sources cited in the surrounding passage
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.