Proving expected sensitivity of probabilistic programs with randomized variable-dependent termination time
Peixin Wang, Hongfei Fu, Krishnendu Chatterjee, Yuxin Deng, Ming Xu
Abstract
The notion of program sensitivity (aka Lipschitz continuity) specifies that changes in the program input result in proportional changes to the program output. For probabilistic programs the notion is naturally extended to expected sensitivity. A previous approach develops a relational program logic framework for proving expected sensitivity of probabilistic while loops, where the number of iterations is fixed and bounded. In this work, we consider probabilistic while loops where the number of iterations is not fixed, but randomized and depends on the initial input values. We present a sound approach for proving expected sensitivity of such programs. Our sound approach is martingale-based and can be automated through existing martingale-synthesis algorithms. Furthermore, our approach is compositional for sequential composition of while loops under a mild side condition. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on several classical examples from Gambler's Ruin, stochastic hybrid systems and stochastic gradient descent. We also present experimental results showing that our automated approach can handle various probabilistic programs in the literature.
Ask about this paper
Your agent reads all of it.
Lune indexed this paper to the last equation, along with the top-tier papers that cite it. Ask a question and the answer quotes them.
Your agent calls
Luneget_paper_fulltext
Free to start. No credit card required.
Terminal
Install the CLIlune papers fulltext 512094d6-3a9a-428e-9954-d0ce53efc3b8Cited by top-tier papers9
- FLEX: fixing flaky tests in machine learning projects by updating assertion boundsSaikat Dutta, August Shi, Sasa MisailovicFSE 2021 · 33 citations
- Sound and Complete Certificates for Quantitative Termination Analysis of Probabilistic ProgramsKrishnendu Chatterjee, Amir Kafshdar Goharshady, Tobias Meggendorfer, Dorde ZikelicCAV 2022 · 30 citations
- A pre-expectation calculus for probabilistic sensitivityAlejandro Aguirre, Gilles Barthe, Justin Hsu, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski et al.POPL 2021 · 24 citations
- Quantitative Bounds on Resource Usage of Probabilistic ProgramsKrishnendu Chatterjee, Amir Kafshdar Goharshady, Tobias Meggendorfer, Dorde ZikelicOOPSLA 2024 · 16 citations
- Lower Bounds for Possibly Divergent Probabilistic ProgramsShenghua Feng, Mingshuai Chen, Han Su, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski et al.OOPSLA 2023 · 14 citations
Builds on1
Related papers
- Proving almost-sure termination by omega-regular decompositionJianhui Chen, Fei HePLDI 2020 · 19 citations
- On Lexicographic Proof Rules for Probabilistic TerminationKrishnendu Chatterjee, Ehsan Kafshdar Goharshady, Petr Novotný, Jiri Zárevúcky et al.FM 2021 · 11 citations
- Learning Probabilistic Termination ProofsAlessandro Abate, Mirco Giacobbe, Diptarko RoyCAV 2021 · 26 citations
- Supermartingales for Unique Fixed Points: A Unified Approach to Lower Bound VerificationSatoshi Kura, Hiroshi Unno, Takeshi TsukadaPLDI 2026
- Hopping Proofs of Expectation-Based Properties: Applications to Skiplists and Security ProofsMartin Avanzini, Gilles Barthe, Benjamin Grégoire, Georg Moser et al.OOPSLA 2024 · 5 citations
