A Verified Compiler for Probability Density Functions

Bhat et al. [TACAS 2013] developed an inductive compiler that computes density functions for probability spaces described by programs in a probabilistic functional language. In this work, we implement such a compiler for a modified version of this language within the theorem prover Isabelle and give a formal proof of its soundness w.r.t. the semantics of the source and target language. Together with Isabelle's code generation for inductive predicates, this yields a fully verified, executable density compiler. The proof is done in two steps: First, an abstract compiler working with abstract functions modelled directly in the theorem prover's logic is defined and proved sound. Then, this compiler is refined to a concrete version that returns a target-language expression.

An article with the same title and authors is published in the proceedings of ESOP 2015. A detailed presentation of this work can be found in the first author's master's thesis.