A long-standing open problem in the semantics of programming languages supporting probabilistic choice is to find a commutative monad for probability on the category DCPO. In this paper we present three such monads and a general construction for finding even more. We show how to use these monads to provide a sound and adequate denotational semantics for the Probabilistic FixPoint Calculus (PFPC) -- a call-by-value simply-typed lambda calculus with mixed-variance recursive types, term recursion and probabilistic choice. We also show that in the special case where we consider continuous dcpo's, then all three monads coincide with the valuations monad of Jones and we fully characterise the induced Eilenberg-Moore categories by showing that they are all isomorphic to the category of continuous Kegelspitzen of Keimel and Plotkin.
We consider a bag (multiset) monad on the category of standard Borel spaces, and show that it gives a free measurable commutative monoid. Firstly, we show that a recent measurability result for probabilistic database queries (Grohe and Lindner, ICDT 2020) follows quickly from the fact that queries can be expressed in monad-based terms. We also extend this measurability result to a fuller query language. Secondly, we discuss a distributive law between probability and bag monads, and we illustrate that this is useful for generating probabilistic databases.
We give a commutative valuations monad Z on the category DCPO of dcpo's and Scott-continuous functions. Compared to the commutative valuations monads given in [Jia et al., 2021], our new monad Z is larger and it contains all push-forward images of valuations on the unit interval [0,1] along lower semi-continuous maps. We believe that this new monad will be useful in giving domain-theoretic denotational semantics for statistical programming languages with continuous probabilistic choice.
A point process on a space is a random bag of elements of that space. In this paper we explore programming with point processes in a monadic style. To this end we identify point processes on a space X with probability measures of bags of elements in X. We describe this view of point processes using the composition of the Giry and bag monads on the category of measurable spaces and functions and prove that this composition also forms a monad using a distributive law for monads. Finally, we define a morphism from a point process to its intensity measure, and show that this is a monad morphism. A…
C*-algebras form rather general and rich mathematical structures that can be studied with different morphisms (preserving multiplication, or not), and with different properties (commutative, or not). These various options can be used to incorporate various styles of computation (set-theoretic, probabilistic, quantum) inside categories of C*-algebras. At first, this paper concentrates on the commutative case and shows that there are functors from several Kleisli categories, of monads that are relevant to model probabilistic computations, to categories of C*-algebras. This yields a new probabili…
Coalgebras in a Kleisli category yield a generic definition of trace semantics for various types of labelled transition systems. In this paper we apply this generic theory to generative probabilistic transition systems, short PTS, with arbitrary (possibly uncountable) state spaces. We consider the sub-probability monad and the probability monad (Giry monad) on the category of measurable spaces and measurable functions. Our main contribution is that the existence of a final coalgebra in the Kleisli category of these monads is closely connected to the measure-theoretic extension theorem for sigm…
We develop a method to incrementally construct programming languages. Our approach is categorical: each layer of the language is described as a monad. Our method either (i) concretely builds a distributive law between two monads, i.e. layers of the language, which then provides a monad structure to the composition of layers, or (ii) identifies precisely the algebraic obstacles to the existence of a distributive law and gives a best approximant language. The running example will involve three layers: a basic imperative language enriched first by adding non-determinism and then probabilistic cho…
The stochastic interpretation of Parikh's game logic should not follow the usual pattern of Kripke models, which in turn are based on the Kleisli morphisms for the Giry monad, rather, a specific and more general approach to probabilistic nondeterminism is required. We outline this approach together with its probabilistic and measure theoretic basis, introducing in a leisurely pace the Giry monad and their Kleisli morphisms together with important techniques for manipulating them. Proof establishing specific techniques are given, and pointers to the extant literature are provided. After working…
The monad of convex sets of probability distributions is a well-known tool for modelling the combination of nondeterministic and probabilistic computational effects. In this work we lift this monad from the category of sets to the category of metric spaces, by means of the Hausdorff and Kantorovich metric liftings. Our main result is the presentation of this lifted monad in terms of the quantitative equational theory of convex semilattices, using the framework of quantitative algebras recently introduced by Mardare, Panangaden and Plotkin.
The coalgebraic modelling of alternating automata and of probabilistic automata has long been obstructed by the absence of distributive laws of the powerset monad over itself, respectively of the powerset monad over the finite distribution monad. This can be fixed using the framework of weak distributive laws. We extend this framework to the case when one of the monads is only a functor. We provide abstract compositionality results, a generalized determinization procedure, and systematic soundness of up-to techniques. Along the way, we apply these results to alternating automata as a motivatin…
We give a conceptual treatment of the notion of joints, marginals, and independence in the setting of categorical probability. This is achieved by endowing the usual probability monads (like the Giry monad) with a monoidal and an opmonoidal structure, mutually compatible (i.e. a bimonoidal structure). If the underlying monoidal category is cartesian monoidal, a bimonoidal structure is given uniquely by a commutative strength. However, if the underlying monoidal category is not cartesian monoidal, a strength is not enough to guarantee all the desired properties of joints and marginals. A bimono…
We consider three monads on Top, the category of topological spaces, which formalize topological aspects of probability and possibility in categorical terms. The first one is the Hoare hyperspace monad H, which assigns to every space its space of closed subsets equipped with the lower Vietoris topology. The second is the monad V of continuous valuations, also known as the extended probabilistic powerdomain. We construct both monads in a unified way in terms of double dualization. This reveals a close analogy between them, and allows us to prove that the operation of taking the support of a con…
We study monads resulting from the combination of nondeterministic and probabilistic behaviour with the possibility of termination, which is essential in program semantics. Our main contributions are presentation results for the monads, providing equational reasoning tools for establishing equivalences and distances of programs.
State-based models of concurrent systems are traditionally considered under a variety of notions of process equivalence. In the particular case of labelled transition systems, these equivalences range from trace equivalence to (strong) bisimilarity, and are organized in what is known as the linear time -- branching time spectrum. A combination of universal coalgebra and graded monads provides a generic framework in which the semantics of concurrency can be parametrized both over the branching type of the underlying transition systems and over the granularity of process equivalence. We show in …
The ALEA Coq library formalizes measure theory based on a variant of the Giry monad on the category of sets. This enables the interpretation of a probabilistic programming language with primitives for sampling from discrete distributions. However, continuous distributions have to be discretized because the corresponding measures cannot be defined on all subsets of their carriers. This paper proposes the use of synthetic topology to model continuous distributions for probabilistic computations in type theory. We study the initial $σ$-frame and the corresponding induced topology on arbitrary set…
We investigate the possibility of deriving metric trace semantics in a coalgebraic framework. First, we generalize a technique for systematically lifting functors from the category Set of sets to the category PMet of pseudometric spaces, showing under which conditions also natural transformations, monads and distributive laws can be lifted. By exploiting some recent work on an abstract determinization, these results enable the derivation of trace metrics starting from coalgebras in Set. More precisely, for a coalgebra on Set we determinize it, thus obtaining a coalgebra in the Eilenberg-Moore …
We investigate the decidability of model-checking logics of time, knowledge and probability, with respect to two epistemic semantics: the clock and synchronous perfect recall semantics in partially observed discrete-time Markov chains. Decidability results are known for certain restricted logics with respect to these semantics, subject to a variety of restrictions that are either unexplained or involve a longstanding unsolved mathematical problem. We show that mild generalizations of the known decidable cases suffice to render the model checking problem definitively undecidable. In particular,…
We investigate the decidability of model-checking logics of time, knowledge and probability, with respect to two epistemic semantics: the clock and synchronous perfect recall semantics in partially observed discrete-time Markov chains. Decidability results are known for certain restricted logics with respect to these semantics, subject to a variety of restrictions that are either unexplained or involve a longstanding unsolved mathematical problem. We show that mild generalizations of the known decidable cases suffice to render the model checking problem definitively undecidable. In particular,…
We consider a programming language that can manipulate both classical and quantum information. Our language is type-safe and designed for variational quantum programming, which is a hybrid classical-quantum computational paradigm. The classical subsystem of the language is the Probabilistic FixPoint Calculus (PFPC), which is a lambda calculus with mixed-variance recursive types, term recursion and probabilistic choice. The quantum subsystem is a first-order linear type system that can manipulate quantum information. The two subsystems are related by mixed classical/quantum terms that specify h…
Emerging computational paradigms, such as probabilistic and hybrid programming, introduce new primitive operations that often need to be combined with classic programming constructs. However, it still remains a challenge to provide a semantics to these features and their combination in a systematic manner. For this reason, we introduce a generic, monadic framework that allows us to investigate not only which programming features a given paradigm supports, but also on how it can be extended with new constructs. By applying our method to the probabilistic and hybrid case, we list for example all…
We give an adequate denotational semantics for languages with recursive higher-order types, continuous probability distributions, and soft constraints. These are expressive languages for building Bayesian models of the kinds used in computational statistics and machine learning. Among them are untyped languages, similar to Church and WebPPL, because our semantics allows recursive mixed-variance datatypes. Our semantics justifies important program equivalences including commutativity. Our new semantic model is based on `quasi-Borel predomains'. These are a mixture of chain-complete partial orde…
This thesis deals with the specification and construction of syntax and operational semantics of a programming language. We work with a general notion of signature for specifying objects of a given category as initial objects in a suitable category of models.This characterization, in the spirit of Initial Semantics, gives a justification of the recursion principle. Languages with variable binding, such as the pure lambda calculus, are monads on the category of sets specified through the classical algebraic signatures. The first extensions to syntaxes with equations that we consider are quotien…
Adversarial computations are a widely studied class of computations where resource-bounded probabilistic adversaries have access to oracles, i.e., probabilistic procedures with private state. These computations arise routinely in several domains, including security, privacy and machine learning. In this paper, we develop program logics for reasoning about adversarial computations in a higher-order setting. Our logics are built on top of a simply typed $λ$-calculus extended with a graded monad for probabilities and state. The grading is used to model and restrict the memory footprint and the co…
We give a categorical semantics for a call-by-value linear lambda calculus. Such a lambda calculus was used by Selinger and Valiron as the backbone of a functional programming language for quantum computation. One feature of this lambda calculus is its linear type system, which includes a duplicability operator "!" as in linear logic. Another main feature is its call-by-value reduction strategy, together with a side-effect to model probabilistic measurements. The "!" operator gives rise to a comonad, as in the linear logic models of Seely, Bierman, and Benton. The side-effects give rise to a m…
We give a domain-theoretic semantics to a statistical programming language, using the plain old category of dcpos, in contrast to some more sophisticated recent proposals. Remarkably, our monad of minimal valuations is commutative, which allows for program transformations that permute the order of independent random draws, as one would expect. A similar property is not known for Jones and Plotkin' s monad of continuous valuations. Instead of working with true real numbers, we work with exact real arithmetic, providing a bridge towards possible implementations. (Implementations by themselves ar…
We introduce a Geometry of Interaction model for higher-order quantum computation, and prove its adequacy for a full quantum programming language in which entanglement, duplication, and recursion are all available. Our model comes with a multi-token machine, a proof net system, and a PCF-style language. The approach we develop is not specific to quantum computation, and our model is an instance of a new framework whose main feature is the ability to model commutative effects in a parallel setting. Being based on a multi-token machine equipped with a memory, it has a concrete nature which makes…
