Distributing probability over non-determinism

  • Authors:
  • Daniele Varacca;Glynn Winskel

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, U.K.;Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University, Cambridge, U.K.

  • Venue:
  • Mathematical Structures in Computer Science
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

We study the combination of probability and non-determinism from a categorical point of view. In category theory, non-determinism and probability are represented by suitable monads. However, these two monads do not combine well as they are. To overcome this problem, we introduce the notion of indexed valuations. This notion is used to define a new monad that can be combined with the usual non-deterministic monad via a categorical distributive law. We give an equational characterisation of our construction. We discuss the computational meaning of indexed valuations, and we show how they can be used by giving a denotational semantics of a simple imperative language.