How to interpret parametric formulation of information bottleneck?

Question

I'm reading this paper on latent representations with the information bottleneck https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.06216.pdf and in section three, the authors write that the parametric formulation of the information bottleneck is

$\max\limits_{\phi,\theta} - I_\phi(t;x) + \lambda I_{\phi,\theta}(t;y).$

My question is not about the information bottleneck entirely, but how to understand the first term $\max\limits_{\phi,\theta}$ where $\phi$ and $\theta$ are parameters of a model. This notation doesn't make sense to me as I usually expect something to follow the $\max$. Does it just mean the largest value over all the parameters in the model?

Answer 1

The notation stands for the maximum value of $-I_{\phi}(t;x) + \lambda I_{\phi,\theta}(t;y)$, where the maximum is taken over $\phi,\theta$. The result will be a function of $t,\lambda,x,y$.

Often in such a notation, the possible values of the variables being maximized over is restricted, and sometimes this forms part of the notation (say, $\max_{0 \leq \phi,\theta \leq 1}$). In other times, the possible values are restricted, but this is not reflected in the notation, and should be gleaned from context.