Slicing of Probabilistic Programs based on Specifications

Abstract: This paper presents the first slicing approach for probabilistic programs based on specifications. We show that when probabilistic programs are accompanied by their specifications in the form of pre- and post-condition, we can exploit this semantic information to produce specification-preserving slices strictly more precise than slices yielded by conventional techniques based on data/control dependency. To achieve this goal, our technique is based on the backward propagation of post-conditions via the greatest pre-expectation transformer -- the probabilistic counterpart of Dijkstra weakest pre-condition transformer. The technique is termination-sensitive, allowing to preserve the partial as well as the total correctness of probabilistic programs w.r.t. their specifications. It is modular, featuring a local reasoning principle, and is formally proved correct. As fundamental technical ingredients of our technique, we design and prove sound verification condition generators for establishing the partial and total correctness of probabilistic programs, which are of interest on their own and can be exploited elsewhere for other purposes. On the practical side, we demonstrate the applicability of our approach by means of a few illustrative examples and a case study from the probabilistic modelling field. We also describe an algorithm for computing least slices among the space of slices derived by our technique.