Related papers: Verification and Parameter Synthesis for Stochasti…
Markov chain analysis is a key technique in formal verification. A practical obstacle is that all probabilities in Markov models need to be known. However, system quantities such as failure rates or packet loss ratios, etc. are often not --…
Often one has a preference order among the different systems that satisfy a given specification. Under a probabilistic assumption about the possible inputs, such a preference order is naturally expressed by a weighted automaton, which…
We propose a simple technique for verifying probabilistic models whose transition probabilities are parametric. The key is to replace parametric transitions by nondeterministic choices of extremal values. Analysing the resulting…
Probabilistic model checking aims to prove whether a Markov decision process (MDP) satisfies a temporal logic specification. The underlying methods rely on an often unrealistic assumption that the MDP is precisely known. Consequently,…
This paper explores the application of bandit algorithms in both stochastic and adversarial settings, with a focus on theoretical analysis and practical applications. The study begins by introducing bandit problems, distinguishing between…
Meta-heuristics are powerful tools for solving optimization problems whose structural properties are unknown or cannot be exploited algorithmically. We propose such a meta-heuristic for a large class of optimization problems over discrete…
Probabilistic model checking is a useful technique for specifying and verifying properties of stochastic systems including randomized protocols and reinforcement learning models. Existing methods rely on the assumed structure and…
We formulate the loop-free, binary superoptimization task as a stochastic search problem. The competing constraints of transformation correctness and performance improvement are encoded as terms in a cost function, and a Markov Chain Monte…
This paper proposes the first-ever algorithmic framework for tuning hyper-parameters of stochastic optimization algorithm based on reinforcement learning. Hyper-parameters impose significant influences on the performance of stochastic…
We present a new method for statistical verification of quantitative properties over a partially unknown system with actions, utilising a parameterised model (in this work, a parametric Markov decision process) and data collected from…
We develop a quadratic regularization approach for the solution of high-dimensional multistage stochastic optimization problems characterized by a potentially large number of time periods/stages (e.g. hundreds), a high-dimensional resource…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling is an important and commonly used tool for the analysis of hierarchical models. Nevertheless, practitioners generally have two options for MCMC: utilize existing software that generates a black-box…
The evaluation of heuristic optimizers on test problems, better known as \emph{benchmarking}, is a cornerstone of research in multi-objective optimization. However, most test problems used in benchmarking numerical multi-objective black-box…
We discuss guidelines for evaluating the performance of parameterized stochastic solvers for optimization problems, with particular attention to systems that employ novel hardware, such as digital quantum processors running variational…
This paper proposes a novel approach to determining the internal parameters of the hashing-based approximate model counting algorithm $\mathsf{ApproxMC}$. In this problem, the chosen parameter values must ensure that $\mathsf{ApproxMC}$ is…
Given its ability to analyse stochastic models ranging from discrete and continuous-time Markov chains to Markov decision processes and stochastic games, probabilistic model checking (PMC) is widely used to verify system dependability and…
Optimistic methods have been applied with success to single-objective optimization. Here, we attempt to bridge the gap between optimistic methods and multi-objective optimization. In particular, this paper is concerned with solving…
We introduce the problem of formally verifying properties of Markov processes where the parameters are given by the output of machine learning models. For a broad class of machine learning models, including linear models, tree-based models,…
We extend the quantitative synthesis framework by going beyond the worst-case. On the one hand, classical analysis of two-player games involves an adversary (modeling the environment of the system) which is purely antagonistic and asks for…
A key trait of stochastic optimizers is that multiple runs of the same optimizer in attempting to solve the same problem can produce different results. As a result, their performance is evaluated over several repeats, or runs, on the…