Scaling exact inference for discrete probabilistic programs

Abstract

Probabilistic programming languages (PPLs) are an expressive means of representing and reasoning about probabilistic models. The computational challenge ofprobabilistic inferenceremains the primary roadblock for applying PPLs in practice. Inference is fundamentally hard, so there is no one-size-fits all solution. In this work, we target scalable inference for an important class of probabilistic programs: those whose probability distributions arediscrete. Discrete distributions are common in many fields, including text analysis, network verification, artificial intelligence, and graph analysis, but they prove to be challenging for existing PPLs.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Nov 13, 2020
Source ID
10.1145/3428208

Entities

People

  • Guy Van den Broeck
  • Steven Holtzen
  • Todd Millstein

Organizations

  • Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
  • National Science Foundation
  • University of California, Los Angeles

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Machine Learning Algorithms