Guaranteed Bounds for Discrete Probabilistic Programs with Loops via Generating Functions
We present a technique to find guaranteed upper and lower bounds on the posterior distribution of probabilistic programs with loops. It relies on probability generating functions to represent distributions. Lower bounds can easily be obtained by Kleene iteration (unrolling the loops a finite number of times). We attack the harder problem of finding upper bounds by searching for an inductive invariant of a certain shape. This can be reduced to finding a solution to a system of polynomial inequalities (a decidable problem in the theory of the reals). Our method is provably sound and, if a solution can be found, it yields bounds on the probability masses, moments, and tail behavior of the program distribution. Our prototype implementation finds guaranteed bounds fully automatically for many examples from the literature that previously required human input to be solved.
Guaranteed Bounds via Generating Functions (lafi2024-generating-function-bounds.pdf) | 298KiB |
Sun 14 JanDisplayed time zone: London change
14:00 - 15:30 | Third SessionLAFI at Kelvin Lecture Chair(s): Steven Holtzen Northeastern University, Matthijs Vákár Utrecht University | ||
14:00 10mTalk | Effect Handlers for Choice-Based Learning LAFI File Attached | ||
14:10 10mTalk | Guaranteed Bounds for Discrete Probabilistic Programs with Loops via Generating Functions LAFI File Attached | ||
14:20 10mTalk | JuliaBUGS: A Graph-Based Probabilistic Programming Language using BUGS syntax LAFI Xianda Sun University of Cambridge, Philipp Gabler Independent researcher, Andrew Thomas University of Cambridge, Hong Ge University of Cambridge | ||
14:30 10mTalk | Mixture Languages LAFI File Attached | ||
14:40 10mTalk | Structured Tensor Algebra for Efficient Discrete Probabilistic Inference LAFI Amir Shaikhha University of Edinburgh | ||
14:50 10mTalk | Towards a Categorical Model of the Lilac Separation Logic LAFI John Li Northeastern University, Jon Aytac Sandia National Laboratories, Philip Johnson-Freyd Sandia National Laboratories, Amal Ahmed Northeastern University, USA, Steven Holtzen Northeastern University File Attached | ||
15:00 10mTalk | Toward Probabilistic Coarse-to-Fine Program Synthesis LAFI Maddy Bowers Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alexander K. Lew Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vikash K. Mansinghka Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Joshua B. Tenenbaum Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Armando Solar-Lezama Massachusetts Institute of Technology | ||
15:10 10mTalk | Static Posterior Inference of Bayesian Probabilistic Programming via Polynomial SolvingOnline LAFI Peixin Wang University of Oxford, Hongfei Fu Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tengshun Yang SKLCS, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences & University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guanyan Li University of Oxford, C.-H. Luke Ong NTU | ||
15:20 10mTalk | Abstract Interpretation for Automatic DifferentiationOnline LAFI Jacob Laurel University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Siyuan Brant Qian University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Zhejiang University, Gagandeep Singh University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; VMware Research, Sasa Misailovic University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |