Guest Talk: Justin Hsu: From Couplings to Probabilistic Relational Program Logics

Monday, February 19, 2018, 10:30am

Location: RWTH Aachen University, Department of Computer Science - Ahornstr. 55, building E3, room 9u10

Speaker: Justin Hsu

 

Abstract:

Many program properties are relational, comparing the behavior of a program (or even two different programs) on two different inputs. While researchers have developed various techniques for verifying such properties for standard, deterministic programs, relational properties for probabilistic programs have been more challenging. In this talk, I will survey recent developments targeting a range of probabilistic relational properties, with motivations from privacy, cryptography, machine learning. The key idea is to meld relational program logics with an idea from probability theory, called a probabilistic coupling. The logics allow a highly compositional and surprisingly general style of analysis, supporting clean proofs for a variety of probabilistic relational properties.