A Demonic Outcome Logic for Randomized Nondeterminism

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Zilberstein, Noam, Kozen, Dexter, Silva, Alexandra, Tassarotti, Joseph
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Zilberstein, Noam
Kozen, Dexter
Silva, Alexandra
Tassarotti, Joseph
author_facet Zilberstein, Noam
Kozen, Dexter
Silva, Alexandra
Tassarotti, Joseph
contents Programs increasingly rely on randomization in applications such as cryptography and machine learning. Analyzing randomized programs has been a fruitful research direction, but there is a gap when programs also exploit nondeterminism (for concurrency, efficiency, or algorithmic design). In this paper, we introduce Demonic Outcome Logic for reasoning about programs that exploit both randomization and nondeterminism. The logic includes several novel features, such as reasoning about multiple executions in tandem and manipulating pre- and postconditions using familiar equational laws -- including the distributive law of probabilistic choices over nondeterministic ones. We also give rules for loops that both establish termination and quantify the distribution of final outcomes from a single premise. We illustrate the reasoning capabilities of Demonic Outcome Logic through several case studies, including the Monty Hall problem, an adversarial protocol for simulating fair coins, and a heuristic based probabilistic SAT solver.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_22540
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Demonic Outcome Logic for Randomized Nondeterminism
Zilberstein, Noam
Kozen, Dexter
Silva, Alexandra
Tassarotti, Joseph
Logic in Computer Science
Programming Languages
Programs increasingly rely on randomization in applications such as cryptography and machine learning. Analyzing randomized programs has been a fruitful research direction, but there is a gap when programs also exploit nondeterminism (for concurrency, efficiency, or algorithmic design). In this paper, we introduce Demonic Outcome Logic for reasoning about programs that exploit both randomization and nondeterminism. The logic includes several novel features, such as reasoning about multiple executions in tandem and manipulating pre- and postconditions using familiar equational laws -- including the distributive law of probabilistic choices over nondeterministic ones. We also give rules for loops that both establish termination and quantify the distribution of final outcomes from a single premise. We illustrate the reasoning capabilities of Demonic Outcome Logic through several case studies, including the Monty Hall problem, an adversarial protocol for simulating fair coins, and a heuristic based probabilistic SAT solver.
title A Demonic Outcome Logic for Randomized Nondeterminism
topic Logic in Computer Science
Programming Languages
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22540