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POPL 2021
Sun 17 - Fri 22 January 2021 Online
Fri 22 Jan 2021 16:25 - 16:35 at POPL-A - Probabilistic Programming

Sensitivity properties describe how changes to the input of a program affect the output, typically by upper bounding the distance between the outputs of two runs by a monotone function of the distance between the corresponding inputs. When programs are probabilistic, the distance between outputs is a distance between distributions. The Kantorovich lifting provides a general way of defining a distance between distributions by lifting the distance of the underlying sample space; by choosing an appropriate distance on the base space, one can recover other usual probabilistic distances, such as the Total Variation distance. We develop a relational pre-expectation calculus to upper bound the Kantorovich distance between two executions of a probabilistic program. We illustrate our methods by proving algorithmic stability of a machine learning algorithm, convergence of a reinforcement learning algorithm, and fast mixing for card shuffling algorithms. We also consider some extensions: proving lower bounds on the Total Variation distance and convergence to the uniform distribution. Finally, we describe an asynchronous extension of our calculus to reason about pairs of program executions with different control flow.

Fri 22 Jan

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

15:45 - 16:45
Probabilistic ProgrammingPOPL at POPL-A
15:45
10m
Talk
λS: Computable Semantics for Differentiable Programming with Higher-Order Functions and Datatypes
POPL
Benjamin Sherman Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, Jesse Michel Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michael Carbin Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Link to publication DOI
15:55
10m
Talk
Deciding Accuracy of Differential Privacy Schemes
POPL
Gilles Barthe MPI-SP, Germany / IMDEA Software Institute, Spain, Rohit Chadha University of Missouri, Paul Krogmeier University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, A. Prasad Sistla University of Illinois at Chicago, Mahesh Viswanathan University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Link to publication DOI
16:05
10m
Talk
Probabilistic Programming Semantics for Name Generation
POPL
Marcin Sabok McGill University, Sam Staton University of Oxford, Dario Stein University of Oxford, Michael Wolman McGill University
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
16:15
10m
Talk
Simplifying Multiple-Statement Reductions with the Polyhedral Model
POPL
Cambridge Yang MIT CSAIL, Eric Atkinson MIT CSAIL, Michael Carbin Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Link to publication DOI
16:25
10m
Talk
A Pre-Expectation Calculus for Probabilistic SensitivityDistinguished Paper
POPL
Alejandro Aguirre IMDEA Software Institute and T.U. of Madrid (UPM), Gilles Barthe MPI-SP, Germany / IMDEA Software Institute, Spain, Justin Hsu University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski RWTH Aachen University, Germany, Joost-Pieter Katoen RWTH Aachen University, Christoph Matheja ETH Zurich
Link to publication DOI
16:35
10m
Talk
Paradoxes of probabilistic programming
POPL
Jules Jacobs Radboud University Nijmegen
Link to publication DOI Pre-print