Stochastic Processes as Concurrent Constraint Programs

Abstract

) Vineet Gupta Radha Jagadeesan Prakash Panangaden y vgupta@mail.arc.nasa.gov radha@cs.luc.edu prakash@cs.mcgill.ca Caelum Research Corporation Dept. of Math. and Computer Sciences School of Computer Science NASA Ames Research Center Loyola University--Lake Shore Campus McGill University Moffett Field CA 94035, USA Chicago IL 60626, USA Montreal, Quebec, Canada Abstract This paper describes a stochastic concurrent constraint language for the description and programming of concurrent probabilistic systems. The language can be viewed both as a calculus for describing and reasoning about stochastic processes and as an executable language for simulating stochastic processes. In this language programs encode probability distributions over (potentially infinite) sets of objects. We illustrate the subtleties that arise from the interaction of constraints, random choice and recursion. We describe operational semantics of these programs (programs are run by sampling random choices), deno...