Bounded Model Checking for Probabilistic Programs

In this paper we investigate the applicability of standard model checking approaches to verifying properties in probabilistic programming. As the operational model for a standard probabilistic program is a potentially infinite parametric Markov decision process, no direct adaption of existing techniques is possible. Therefore, we propose an on-the-fly approach where the operational model is successively created and verified via a step-wise execution of the program. This approach enables to take key features of many probabilistic programs into account: nondeterminism and conditioning. We discuss the restrictions and demonstrate the scalability on several benchmarks

Formal verification of higher-order probabilistic programs

Probabilistic programming provides a convenient lingua franca for writing succinct and rigorous descriptions of probabilistic models and inference tasks. Several probabilistic programming languages, including Anglican, Church or Hakaru, derive their expressiveness from a powerful combination of continuous distributions, conditioning, and higher-order functions. Although very important for practical applications, these combined features raise fundamental challenges for program semantics and verification. Several recent works offer promising answers to these challenges, but their primary focus is on semantical issues. In this paper, we take a step further and we develop a set of program logics, named PPV, for proving properties of programs written in an expressive probabilistic higher-order language with continuous distributions and operators for conditioning distributions by real-valued functions. Pleasingly, our program logics retain the comfortable reasoning style of informal proofs thanks to carefully selected axiomatizations of key results from probability theory. The versatility of our logics is illustrated through the formal verification of several intricate examples from statistics, probabilistic inference, and machine learning. We further show the expressiveness of our logics by giving sound embeddings of existing logics. In particular, we do this in a parametric way by showing how the semantics idea of (unary and relational) TT-lifting can be internalized in our logics. The soundness of PPV follows by interpreting programs and assertions in quasi-Borel spaces (QBS), a recently proposed variant of Borel spaces with a good structure for interpreting higher order probabilistic programs

Semantic Foundations of Higher-Order Probabilistic Programs in Isabelle/HOL

Higher-order probabilistic programs are used to describe statistical models and machine-learning mechanisms. The programming languages for them are equipped with three features: higher-order functions, sampling, and conditioning. In this paper, we propose an Isabelle/HOL library for probabilistic programs supporting all of those three features. We extend our previous quasi-Borel theory library in Isabelle/HOL. As a basis of the theory, we formalize s-finite kernels, which is considered as a theoretical foundation of first-order probabilistic programs and a key to support conditioning of probabilistic programs. We also formalize the Borel isomorphism theorem which plays an important role in the quasi-Borel theory. Using them, we develop the s-finite measure monad on quasi-Borel spaces. Our extension enables us to describe higher-order probabilistic programs with conditioning directly as an Isabelle/HOL term whose type is that of morphisms between quasi-Borel spaces. We also implement the qbs prover for checking well-typedness of an Isabelle/HOL term as a morphism between quasi-Borel spaces. We demonstrate several verification examples of higher-order probabilistic programs with conditioning

RankPL: A Qualitative Probabilistic Programming Language

In this paper we introduce RankPL, a modeling language that can be thought of as a qualitative variant of a probabilistic programming language with a semantics based on Spohn's ranking theory. Broadly speaking, RankPL can be used to represent and reason about processes that exhibit uncertainty expressible by distinguishing "normal" from" surprising" events. RankPL allows (iterated) revision of rankings over alternative program states and supports various types of reasoning, including abduction and causal inference. We present the language, its denotational semantics, and a number of practical examples. We also discuss an implementation of RankPL that is available for download