Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
skip to main content
10.1145/2933575.2935317acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageslicsConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Reasoning about Recursive Probabilistic Programs

Published: 05 July 2016 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents a wp--style calculus for obtaining expectations on the outcomes of (mutually) recursive probabilistic programs. We provide several proof rules to derive one-- and two--sided bounds for such expectations, and show the soundness of our wp--calculus with respect to a probabilistic pushdown automaton semantics. We also give a wp--style calculus for obtaining bounds on the expected runtime of recursive programs that can be used to determine the (possibly infinite) time until termination of such programs.

References

[1]
P. Audebaud and C. Paulin-Mohring. Proofs of randomized algorithms in Coq. Science of Comp. Progr., 74(8):568--589, 2009.
[2]
M. Bonsangue and J. Kok. The weakest precondition calculus: Recursion and duality. Formal Aspects of Computing, 6(1):788--800, 1994.
[3]
T. Brázdil, J. Esparza, S. Kiefer, and A. Kucera. Analyzing probabilistic pushdown automata. Formal Methods in System Design, 43 (2):124--163, 2013.
[4]
M. Carbin, S. Misailovic, and M. C. Rinard. Verifying quantitative reliability for programs that execute on unreliable hardware. In Proc. of OOPSLA, pages 33--52. ACM, 2013.
[5]
L. Colussi. Recursion as an effective step in program development. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst., 6(1):55--67, Jan. 1984.
[6]
B. C. Dean. A simple expected running time analysis for randomized "divide and conquer" algorithms. Discrete Appl. Math., 154(1):1--5, 2006.
[7]
E. W. Dijkstra. A Discipline of Programming. Prentice Hall, 1976.
[8]
K. Etessami. Analysis of probabilistic processes and automata theory. In Handbook of Automata Theory. 2016. (to appear).
[9]
L. M. F. Fioriti and H. Hermanns. Probabilistic termination: Soundness, completeness, and compositionality. In Proc. of POPL, pages 489--501. ACM, 2015.
[10]
A. D. Gordon, T. A. Henzinger, A. V. Nori, and S. K. Rajamani. Probabilistic programming. In Future of Software Engineering (FOSE), pages 167--181. ACM, 2014.
[11]
F. Gretz, J.-P. Katoen, and A. McIver. Operational versus weakest pre-expectation semantics for the probabilistic guarded command language. Perform. Eval., 73:110--132, 2014.
[12]
V. Gupta, R. Jagadeesan, and P. Panangaden. Stochastic processes as concurrent constraint programs. In A. W. Appel and A. Aiken, editors, Proc. of POPL, pages 189--202. ACM, 1999.
[13]
E. Hehner. do considered od: A contribution to the programming calculus. Acta Informatica, 11(4):287--304, 1979.
[14]
W. H. Hesselink. Predicate-transformer semantics of general recursion. Acta Informatica, 26(4):309--332, 1989.
[15]
W. H. Hesselink. Proof rules for recursive procedures. Formal Aspects of Computing, 5(6):554--570, 1993.
[16]
C. Jones. Probabilistic Non-determinism. PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1989.
[17]
B. L. Kaminski and J. Katoen. On the hardness of almost-sure termination. In Prof. of MFCS, Part I, volume 9234 of LNCS, pages 307--318. Springer, 2015.
[18]
B. L. Kaminski, J.-P. Katoen, C. Matheja, and F. Olmedo. Weakest precondition reasoning for expected run--times of probabilistic programs. In Proc. of ESOP, LNCS, 2016. To appear.
[19]
R. M. Karp. Probabilistic recurrence relations. J. ACM, 41(6):1136--1150, 1994.
[20]
D. Kozen. Semantics of Probabilistic Programs. J. Comput. Syst. Sci., 22(3):328--350, 1981.
[21]
J. McConnell. Analysis of Algorithms -- An Active Learning Approach. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc., 2008.
[22]
A. McIver and C. Morgan. Partial correctness for probabilistic demonic programs. Theor. Comp. Sc., 266(12):513--541, 2001.
[23]
A. McIver and C. Morgan. Abstraction, Refinement And Proof For Probabilistic Systems. Springer, 2004.
[24]
M. Mitzenmacher and E. Upfal. Probability and Computing: Randomized Algorithms and Probabilistic Analysis. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
[25]
C. Morgan. Proof rules for probabilistic loops. In Proceedings of the BCS-FACS 7th Refinement Workshop. Springer, 1996.
[26]
G. Nelson. A generalization of Dijkstra's calculus. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst., 11(4):517--561, Oct. 1989.
[27]
T. Nipkow. Hoare logics for recursive procedures and unbounded nondeterminism. In Proc. of CSL, volume 2471 of LNCS, pages 103--119. Springer, 2002.
[28]
F. Olmedo, B. L. Kaminski, J. Katoen, and C. Matheja. Reasoning about recursive probabilistic programs. CoRR, abs/1603.02922, 2016.
[29]
A. Pfeffer. Practical Probabilistic Programming. Manning Publications, 2016.
[30]
A. Pfeffer and D. Koller. Semantics and inference for recursive probability models. In Proc. of AAAI, pages 538--544. AAAI Press / The MIT Press, 2000.
[31]
N. Toronto, J. McCarthy, and D. V. Horn. Running probabilistic programs backwards. In Proc. of ESOP, volume 9032 of LNCS, pages 53--79. Springer, 2015.
[32]
X. Zhang, M. Munro, M. Harman, and L. Hu. Weakest precondition for general recursive programs formalized in Coq. In Proc. of TPHOL, volume 2410 of LNCS, pages 332--348. Springer, 2002.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)On the Almost-Sure Termination of Binary SessionsProceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming10.1145/3678232.3678239(1-12)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
  • (2024)Automated Verification of Higher-Order Probabilistic Programs via a Dependent Refinement Type SystemProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36746628:ICFP(973-1002)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2024
  • (2024)Hopping Proofs of Expectation-Based Properties: Applications to Skiplists and Security ProofsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36498398:OOPSLA1(784-809)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Reasoning about Recursive Probabilistic Programs

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Information & Contributors

      Information

      Published In

      cover image ACM Conferences
      LICS '16: Proceedings of the 31st Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science
      July 2016
      901 pages
      ISBN:9781450343916
      DOI:10.1145/2933575
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

      Sponsors

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 05 July 2016

      Permissions

      Request permissions for this article.

      Check for updates

      Author Tags

      1. expected runtime
      2. probabilisitic programming
      3. program verification
      4. recursion
      5. weakest pre--condition calculus

      Qualifiers

      • Research-article
      • Research
      • Refereed limited

      Conference

      LICS '16
      Sponsor:

      Acceptance Rates

      Overall Acceptance Rate 215 of 622 submissions, 35%

      Contributors

      Other Metrics

      Bibliometrics & Citations

      Bibliometrics

      Article Metrics

      • Downloads (Last 12 months)30
      • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
      Reflects downloads up to 15 Oct 2024

      Other Metrics

      Citations

      Cited By

      View all
      • (2024)On the Almost-Sure Termination of Binary SessionsProceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming10.1145/3678232.3678239(1-12)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
      • (2024)Automated Verification of Higher-Order Probabilistic Programs via a Dependent Refinement Type SystemProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36746628:ICFP(973-1002)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2024
      • (2024)Hopping Proofs of Expectation-Based Properties: Applications to Skiplists and Security ProofsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36498398:OOPSLA1(784-809)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
      • (2024)Quantitative Bounds on Resource Usage of Probabilistic ProgramsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36498248:OOPSLA1(362-391)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
      • (2024)Positive Almost-Sure Termination: Complexity and Proof RulesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36328798:POPL(1089-1117)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2024
      • (2023)A Deductive Verification Infrastructure for Probabilistic ProgramsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228707:OOPSLA2(2052-2082)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
      • (2023)Lilac: A Modal Separation Logic for Conditional ProbabilityProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35912267:PLDI(148-171)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
      • (2023)Formally Verified Samplers from Probabilistic Programs with Loops and ConditioningProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35912207:PLDI(1-24)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
      • (2023)On Lexicographic Proof Rules for Probabilistic TerminationFormal Aspects of Computing10.1145/358539135:2(1-25)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2023
      • (2023)On Certificates, Expected Runtimes, and Termination in Probabilistic Pushdown Automata2023 38th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS)10.1109/LICS56636.2023.10175714(1-13)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2023
      • Show More Cited By

      View Options

      Get Access

      Login options

      View options

      PDF

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader

      Media

      Figures

      Other

      Tables

      Share

      Share

      Share this Publication link

      Share on social media