arXiv subjects

Guanyan Li

Publications and source records attributed to Guanyan Li.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Structural Abstraction and Refinement for Probabilistic Programs

In this paper, we present structural abstraction refinement, a novel framework for verifying the threshold problem of probabilistic programs. Our approach represents the structure of a Probabilistic Control-Flow Automaton (PCFA) as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) by abstracting away statement semantics. The maximum reachability of the MDP naturally provides a proper upper bound of the violation probability, termed the structural upper bound. This introduces a fresh ``structural'' characterization of the relationship between PCFA and MDP, contrasting with the traditional ``semantical'' view, where the MDP reflects semantics. The method uniquely features a clean separation of concerns between probability and computational semantics that the abstraction focuses solely on probabilistic computation and the refinement handles only the semantics aspect, where the latter allows non-random program verification techniques to be employed without modification. Building upon this feature, we propose a general counterexample-guided abstraction refinement (CEGAR) framework, capable of leveraging established non-probabilistic techniques for probabilistic verification. We explore its instantiations using trace abstraction. Our method was evaluated on a diverse set of examples against state-of-the-art tools, and the experimental results highlight its versatility and ability to handle more flexible structures swiftly.

cs.FL↗

arXiv2023

Static Posterior Inference of Bayesian Probabilistic Programming via Polynomial Solving

In Bayesian probabilistic programming, a central problem is to estimate the normalised posterior distribution (NPD) of a probabilistic program with conditioning via score (a.k.a. observe) statements. Most previous approaches address this problem by Markov Chain Monte Carlo and variational inference, and therefore could not generate guaranteed outcomes within a finite time limit. Moreover, existing methods for exact inference either impose syntactic restrictions or cannot guarantee successful inference in general. In this work, we propose a novel automated approach to derive guaranteed bounds for NPD via polynomial solving. We first establish a fixed-point theorem for the wide class of score-at-end Bayesian probabilistic programs that terminate almost-surely and have a single bounded score statement at program termination. Then, we propose a multiplicative variant of Optional Stopping Theorem (OST) to address score-recursive Bayesian programs where score statements with weights greater than one could appear inside a loop. Finally, we use polynomial solving to implement our fixed-point theorem and OST variant. To improve the accuracy of the polynomial solving, we further propose a truncation operation and the synthesis of multiple bounds over various program inputs. Our approach can handle Bayesian probabilistic programs with unbounded while loops and continuous distributions with infinite supports. Experiments over a wide range of benchmarks show that compared with the most relevant approach (Beutner et al., PLDI 2022) for guaranteed NPD analysis via recursion unrolling, our approach is more time efficient and derives comparable or even tighter NPD bounds. Furthermore, our approach can handle score-recursive programs which previous approaches could not.

cs.PL↗

arXiv2022

ProbTA: A sound and complete proof rule for probabilistic verification

We propose a sound and complete proof rule ProbTA for quantitative analysis of violation probability of probabilistic programs. Our approach extends the technique of trace abstraction with probability in the control-flow randomness style, in contrast to previous work of combining trace abstraction and probabilisitic verification which adopts the data randomness style. In our method, a program specification is proved or disproved by decomposing the program into different modules of traces. Precise quantitative analysis is enabled by novel models proposed to bridge program verification and probability theory. Based on the proof rule, we propose a new automated algorithm via CEGAR involving multiple technical issues unprecedented in non-probabilistic trace abstraction and data randomness-based approach.

cs.PL↗