Related papers: A Domain Theory for Statistical Probabilistic Prog…
Higher-order probabilistic programming languages allow programmers to write sophisticated models in machine learning and statistics in a succinct and structured way, but step outside the standard measure-theoretic formalization of…
We present a modular semantic account of Bayesian inference algorithms for probabilistic programming languages, as used in data science and machine learning. Sophisticated inference algorithms are often explained in terms of composition of…
We give a domain-theoretic semantics to a statistical programming language, using the plain old category of dcpos, in contrast to some more sophisticated recent proposals. Remarkably, our monad of minimal valuations is commutative, which…
We introduce the categories of quasi-measurable spaces, which are slight generalizations of the category of quasi-Borel spaces, where we now allow for general sample spaces and less restrictive random variables, spaces and maps. We show…
We make a formal analogy between random sampling and fresh name generation. We show that quasi-Borel spaces, a model for probabilistic programming, can soundly interpret Stark's $\nu$-calculus, a calculus for name generation. Moreover, we…
We study the semantic foundation of expressive probabilistic programming languages, that support higher-order functions, continuous distributions, and soft constraints (such as Anglican, Church, and Venture). We define a metalanguage (an…
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,…
Many probabilistic programming languages allow programs to be run under constraints in order to carry out Bayesian inference. Running programs under constraints could enable other uses such as rare event simulation and probabilistic…
We define a probabilistic programming language for Gaussian random variables with a first-class exact conditioning construct. We give operational, denotational and equational semantics for this language, establishing convenient properties…
We describe a mathematical structure that can give extensional denotational semantics to higher-order probabilistic programs. It is not limited to discrete probabilities, and it is compatible with integration in a way the models that have…
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…
We present a semantics of a probabilistic while-language with soft conditioning and continuous distributions which handles programs diverging with positive probability. To this end, we extend the probabilistic guarded command language…
We present a domain-theoretic framework for probabilistic programming that provides a constructive definition of conditional probability and addresses computability challenges previously identified in the literature. We introduce a novel…
Arguing for the need to combine declarative and probabilistic programming, B\'ar\'any et al. (TODS 2017) recently introduced a probabilistic extension of Datalog as a "purely declarative probabilistic programming language." We revisit this…
Probabilistic powerdomain in domain theory plays an important role in modeling the semantics of nondeterministic functional programming languages with probabilistic choice. In this paper, we extend the notion of powerdomain to directed…
Probabilistic programming languages rely fundamentally on some notion of sampling, and this is doubly true for probabilistic programming languages which perform Bayesian inference using Monte Carlo techniques. Verifying samplers - proving…
Quasi-probabilities appear across diverse areas of physics, but their conceptual foundations remain unclear: they are often treated merely as computational tools, and operations like conditioning and Bayes' theorem become ambiguous. We…
Domain theory has a long history of applications in theoretical computer science and mathematics. In this article, we explore the relation of domain theory to probability theory and stochastic processes. The goal is to establish a theory in…
Vector space models have become popular in distributional semantics, despite the challenges they face in capturing various semantic phenomena. We propose a novel probabilistic framework which draws on both formal semantics and recent…
There is no known way of giving a domain-theoretic semantics to higher-order probabilistic languages, in such a way that the involved domains are continuous or quasi-continuous - the latter is required to do any serious mathematics. We…