Verifying probabilistic procedural programs

  • Authors:
  • Javier Esparza;Kousha Etessami

  • Affiliations:
  • Institute for Formal Methods in Computer Science, University of Stuttgart;School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

  • Venue:
  • FSTTCS'04 Proceedings of the 24th international conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Monolithic finite-state probabilistic programs have been abstractly modeled by finite Markov chains, and the algorithmic verification problems for them have been investigated very extensively. In this paper we survey recent work conducted by the authors together with colleagues on he algorithmic verification of probabilistic procedural programs ([BKS,EKM04,EY04]). Probabilistic procedural programs can more naturally be modeled by recursive Markov chains ([EY04)], or equivalently, probabilistic pushdown automata ([EKM04)]. A very rich theory emerges for these models. While our recent work solves a number of verification problems for these models, many intriguing questions remain open.