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Bounded Model Checking for Probabilistic Programs

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Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis (ATVA 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9938))

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the applicability of standard model checking approaches to verifying properties in probabilistic programming. As the operational model for a standard probabilistic program is a potentially infinite parametric Markov decision process, no direct adaption of existing techniques is possible. Therefore, we propose an on–the–fly approach where the operational model is successively created and verified via a step–wise execution of the program. This approach enables to take key features of many probabilistic programs into account: nondeterminism and conditioning. We discuss the restrictions and demonstrate the scalability on several benchmarks.

This work has been partly funded by the awards AFRL # FA9453-15-1-0317, ARO # W911NF-15-1-0592 and ONR # N00014-15-IP-00052 and is supported by the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state government.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Also referred to as adversaries, strategies, or policies.

  2. 2.

    We have tacitly overloaded the variable name x to an expectation here for readability. More formally, by the “expectation x” we actually mean the expectation \(\lambda \sigma . \sigma (x)\).

  3. 3.

    All input programs and log files of the experiments can be downloaded at moves.rwth-aachen.de/wp-content/uploads/conference_material/pgcl_atva16.tar.gz.

  4. 4.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector%27s_problem.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Christian Dehnert, Benjamin Lucien Kaminski, Joost-Pieter Katoen & Lukas Westhofen

  2. University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA

    Nils Jansen

Authors
  1. Nils Jansen
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  2. Christian Dehnert
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  3. Benjamin Lucien Kaminski
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  4. Joost-Pieter Katoen
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  5. Lukas Westhofen
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Correspondence to Nils Jansen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. AIST , Osaka, Japan

    Cyrille Artho

  2. Inria Rennes , Rennes, France

    Axel Legay

  3. Bar Ilan University , Ramat Gan, Israel

    Doron Peled

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Jansen, N., Dehnert, C., Kaminski, B.L., Katoen, JP., Westhofen, L. (2016). Bounded Model Checking for Probabilistic Programs. In: Artho, C., Legay, A., Peled, D. (eds) Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis. ATVA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9938. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46520-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46520-3_5

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