The Bethe approximation is a well-known approximation of the partition
function used in statistical physics. Recently, an equality relating the
partition function and its Bethe approximation was obtained for graphical
models with binary variables by Chertkov and Chernyak. In this equality, the
multiplicative error in the Bethe approximation is represented as a weighted
sum over all generalized loops in the graphical model. In this paper, the
equality is generalized to graphical models with non-binary alphabet using
concepts from information geometry.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, submitted to IEEE Trans. Inf. Theor
