Mon 24 Jun 2019 14:20 - 14:40 at 224AB - Probabilistic Programming Chair(s): Martin Hirzel

We consider the problem of expected cost analysis over nondeterministic probabilistic programs,
which aims at automated methods for analyzing the resource-usage of such programs.
Previous approaches for this problem could only handle nonnegative bounded costs.
However, in many scenarios, such as queuing networks or analysis of cryptocurrency protocols,
both positive and negative costs are necessary and the costs are unbounded as well.

In this work, we present a sound and efficient approach to obtain polynomial bounds on the
expected accumulated cost of nondeterministic probabilistic programs.
Our approach can handle (a) general positive and negative costs with bounded updates in
variables; and (b) nonnegative costs with general updates to variables.
We show that several natural examples which could not be
handled by previous approaches are captured in our framework.

Moreover, our approach leads to an efficient polynomial-time algorithm, while no
previous approach for cost analysis of probabilistic programs could guarantee polynomial runtime.
Finally, we show the effectiveness of our approach using experimental results on a variety of programs for which we efficiently synthesize tight resource-usage bounds.

Mon 24 Jun

Displayed time zone: Tijuana, Baja California change

14:00 - 15:30
Probabilistic ProgrammingPLDI Research Papers at 224AB
Chair(s): Martin Hirzel IBM Research
14:00
20m
Talk
Scalable Verification of Probabilistic Networks
PLDI Research Papers
Steffen Smolka Cornell University, Praveen Kumar Cornell University, David M. Kahn Carnegie Mellon University, USA, Nate Foster Cornell University, Justin Hsu University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, Dexter Kozen Cornell University, Alexandra Silva University College London
DOI Pre-print Media Attached
14:20
20m
Talk
Cost Analysis of Nondeterministic Probabilistic Programs
PLDI Research Papers
Peixin Wang Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Hongfei Fu IST Austria, Amir Kafshdar Goharshady IST Austria, Krishnendu Chatterjee IST Austria, Xudong Qin East China Normal University, China, Wenjun Shi East China Normal University, China
Media Attached
14:40
20m
Talk
Gen: A General-Purpose Probabilistic Programming System with Programmable Inference
PLDI Research Papers
Marco Cusumano-Towner MIT-CSAIL, Feras Saad Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alexander K. Lew Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, Vikash K. Mansinghka MIT
Media Attached
15:00
20m
Talk
Incremental Precision-Preserving Symbolic Inference for Probabilistic Programs
PLDI Research Papers
Jieyuan Zhang UNSW, Australia, Jingling Xue UNSW Sydney
Media Attached