Related papers: Probabilistic Rely-guarantee Calculus
Probability-like parameters appearing in some statistical models, and their prior distributions, are reinterpreted through the notion of `circumstance', a term which stands for any piece of knowledge that is useful in assigning a…
Since its original formulation, Jensen's inequality has played a fundamental role across mathematics, statistics, and machine learning, with its probabilistic version highlighting the nonnegativity of the so-called Jensen's gap, i.e., the…
In this paper, we consider the problem of learning safe policies for probabilistic-constrained reinforcement learning (RL). Specifically, a safe policy or controller is one that, with high probability, maintains the trajectory of the agent…
We present a modular approach to \emph{reinforcement learning} (RL) in environments consisting of simpler components evolving in parallel. A monolithic view of such modular environments may be prohibitively large to learn, or may require…
Given a finite collection of probability measures defined on subsets of a measurable space, how can we determine if they are compatible, in the sense that they can be realized as conditional distributions of a single probability measure on…
Machine learning systems are increasingly being used to make impactful decisions such as loan applications and criminal justice risk assessments, and as such, ensuring fairness of these systems is critical. This is often challenging as the…
This paper introduces a declarative framework to specify and reason about distributions of data over computing nodes in a distributed setting. More specifically, it proposes distribution constraints which are tuple and equality generating…
Probabilistic context-free grammars have a long-term record of use as generative models in machine learning and symbolic regression. When used for symbolic regression, they generate algebraic expressions. We define the latter as equivalence…
Multi-task reinforcement learning trains generalist policies that can execute multiple tasks. While recent years have seen significant progress, existing approaches rarely provide formal performance guarantees, which are indispensable when…
In Probabilistic Logic Nilsson uses the device of a probability distribution over a set of possible worlds to assign probabilities to the sentences of a logical language. In his paper Nilsson concentrated on inference and associated…
Computing the probability of a formula given the probabilities or weights associated with other formulas is a natural extension of logical inference to the probabilistic setting. Surprisingly, this problem has received little attention in…
We develop a systematic approach to quantum probability as a theory of rational betting in quantum gambles. In these games of chance the agent is betting in advance on the outcomes of several (finitely many) incompatible measurements. One…
It is more important to estimate the rate of convergence to a stationary distribution rather than only to prove the existence one in many applied problems of reliability and queuing theory. This can be done via standard methods, but only…
This paper discusses the semantics and proof theory of Nilsson's probabilistic logic, outlining both the benefits of its well-defined model theory and the drawbacks of its proof theory. Within Nilsson's semantic framework, we derive a set…
High assurance of information-flow security (IFS) for concurrent systems is challenging. A promising way for formal verification of concurrent systems is the rely-guarantee method. However, existing compositional reasoning approaches for…
Model checking of strategic abilities is a notoriously hard problem, even more so in the realistic case of agents with imperfect information, acting in a stochastic environment. Assume-guarantee reasoning can be of great help here,…
We present a complete reasoning principle for contextual equivalence in an untyped probabilistic language. The language includes continuous (real-valued) random variables, conditionals, and scoring. It also includes recursion, since the…
A wide-spectrum language integrates specification constructs into a programming language in a manner that treats a specification command just like any other command. This paper investigates a semantic model for a wide-spectrum language that…
We define an extension of lambda-calculus with dependents types that enables us to encode transparent and opaque probabilistic programs and prove a strong normalisation result for it by a reducibility technique. While transparent…
Probabilistic programming combines general computer programming, statistical inference, and formal semantics to help systems make decisions when facing uncertainty. Probabilistic programs are ubiquitous, including having a significant…