POPL 2024
Sun 14 - Sat 20 January 2024 London, United Kingdom
Sun 14 Jan 2024 11:40 - 11:50 at Kelvin Lecture - Second Session Chair(s): Steven Holtzen, Matthijs Vákár

SPPL [8] is an expressive probabilistic programming language with exact inference where users express their models using a DSL which compiles to generalized sum-product networks (SPNs) [7] with univariate leaves. Despite its expressiveness, SPPL does not support inference in linear-Gaussian state-space models which are a widely used class of probabilistic models that support exact in- ference. As such, SPPL does not support useful algorithms such as linear regression or Kalman filtering. This limitation stems from the fact that SPPL only supports univariate leaves in its SPN rep- resentation of programs. In this abstract, first, we specify a com- putational interface for the leaves of SPNs which ensures closure under conditioning, providing the ability to perform exact infer- ence. Second, we observe that certain multivariate distributions– such as the multivariate Gaussian–support our interface suggesting the possibility of extending SPPL to use multivariate leaves. Third, we discuss the design considerations involving PPLs that use this extended class of SPNs to express probability distributions.

Sun 14 Jan

Displayed time zone: London change

11:00 - 12:30
Second SessionLAFI at Kelvin Lecture
Chair(s): Steven Holtzen Northeastern University, Matthijs Vákár Utrecht University
11:00
10m
Talk
A Tree Sampler for Bounded Context-Free Languages
LAFI
Breandan Considine McGill University
File Attached
11:10
10m
Talk
A Multi-language Approach to Probabilistic Program Inference
LAFI
Sam Stites Northeastern University, Steven Holtzen Northeastern University
11:20
10m
Talk
Belief Programming in Partially Observable Probabilistic Environments
LAFI
Tobias Gürtler Saarland University, Saarland Informatics Campus, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski Saarland University; University College London
11:30
10m
Talk
Homomorphic Reverse Differentiation of IterationOnline
LAFI
Fernando Lucatelli Nunes Utrecht University, Gordon Plotkin Google, Matthijs Vákár Utrecht University
File Attached
11:40
10m
Talk
MultiSPPL: extending SPPL with multivariate leaf nodes
LAFI
Matin Ghavami Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mathieu Huot MIT, Martin C. Rinard Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vikash K. Mansinghka Massachusetts Institute of Technology
11:50
10m
Talk
Reverse mode ADEV via YOLO: tangent estimators transpose to gradient estimators
LAFI
McCoy Reynolds Becker MIT, Mathieu Huot MIT, Alexander K. Lew Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vikash K. Mansinghka Massachusetts Institute of Technology
12:00
10m
Talk
Sparse Differentiation in Computer Graphics
LAFI
Kevin Mu University of Washington, Jesse Michel Massachusetts Institute of Technology, William S. Moses Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shoaib Kamil Adobe Research, Zachary Tatlock University of Washington, Alec Jacobson University of Toronto, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley Massachusetts Institute of Technology
12:10
10m
Talk
A slice sampler for the Indian Buffet Process: expressivity in nonparametric probabilistic programming
LAFI
Maria-Nicoleta Craciun University of Oxford, C.-H. Luke Ong NTU, Hugo Paquet LIPN, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Sam Staton University of Oxford
12:20
10m
Talk
Effective Sequential Monte Carlo for Language Model Probabilistic Programs
LAFI
Alexander K. Lew Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tan Zhi-Xuan Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gabriel Grand Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jacob Andreas MIT, Vikash K. Mansinghka Massachusetts Institute of Technology