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POPL 2021
Sun 17 - Fri 22 January 2021 Online
Fri 22 Jan 2021 15:55 - 16:05 at POPL-A - Probabilistic Programming

Differential privacy is a mathematical framework for developing statistical computations with provable guarantees of privacy and accuracy. In contrast to the privacy component of differential privacy, which has a clear mathematical and intuitive meaning, the accuracy component of differential privacy does not have a general accepted definition; accuracy claims of differential privacy algorithms vary from algorithm to algorithm and are not instantiations of a general definition. We identify program discontinuity as a common cause for ad hoc definitions and introduce an alternative notion of accuracy parametrized by, what we call, distance — the distance of an input x w.r.t. a deterministic computation f and a distance d is the minimal distance d(x, y) over all y such that f(y) ≠ f(x). We show that our notion of accuracy subsumes the definition used in randomized algorithm design, and captures known accuracy claims for differential privacy algorithms. In fact, our general notion of accuracy helps us prove better claims in some cases. Next, we study decidability of accuracy. We first show that accuracy is in general undecidable. Then, we define a non-trivial class of probabilistic computations for which accuracy is decidable (unconditionally, or assuming Schanuel’s conjecture). We implement our decision procedure and experimentally evaluate the effectiveness of our approach for generating proofs or counterexamples of accuracy for common algorithms from the literature.

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