Younesse Kaddar ; Sam Staton - A model of stochastic memoization and name generation in probabilistic programming: categorical semantics via monads on presheaf categories

entics:12291 - Electronic Notes in Theoretical Informatics and Computer Science, November 23, 2023, Volume 3 - Proceedings of MFPS XXXIX - https://doi.org/10.46298/entics.12291
A model of stochastic memoization and name generation in probabilistic programming: categorical semantics via monads on presheaf categoriesArticle

Authors: Younesse Kaddar ; Sam Staton

    Stochastic memoization is a higher-order construct of probabilistic programming languages that is key in Bayesian nonparametrics, a modular approach that allows us to extend models beyond their parametric limitations and compose them in an elegant and principled manner. Stochastic memoization is simple and useful in practice, but semantically elusive, particularly regarding dataflow transformations. As the naive implementation resorts to the state monad, which is not commutative, it is not clear if stochastic memoization preserves the dataflow property -- i.e., whether we can reorder the lines of a program without changing its semantics, provided the dataflow graph is preserved. In this paper, we give an operational and categorical semantics to stochastic memoization and name generation in the context of a minimal probabilistic programming language, for a restricted class of functions. Our contribution is a first model of stochastic memoization of constant Bernoulli functions with a non-enumerable type, which validates data flow transformations, bridging the gap between traditional probability theory and higher-order probability models. Our model uses a presheaf category and a novel probability monad on it.


    Volume: Volume 3 - Proceedings of MFPS XXXIX
    Published on: November 23, 2023
    Accepted on: October 16, 2023
    Submitted on: September 19, 2023
    Keywords: Computer Science - Programming Languages

    1 Document citing this article

    Consultation statistics

    This page has been seen 114 times.
    This article's PDF has been downloaded 119 times.