Toward Probabilistic Coarse-to-Fine Program Synthesis
summary
Synthesizes programs by starting with coarse probabilistic programs that use randomness as placeholders, then iteratively refines high-entropy expressions into low-entropy ones until a deterministic program or a probabilistic conditional model emerges. Implements a simply-typed lambda calculus with Y combinator and domain primitives and evaluates likelihoods via mutually recursive constrain and forward algorithms that enumerate weak-head normal forms. Works on infinite generators, constrains lists in ~3–4 ms, and yields roughly 10^2–10^4 fewer sample rollouts on benchmarks using likelihood pruning and guided search.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Probabilistic program synthesis intro
- 1:23Top-down synthesis limits
- 2:48Pruning search inefficiencies
- 3:08Probabilistic programs with randomness
- 4:34Likelihood-guided efficient synthesis
- 6:00Likelihoods with constrain and forward
- 9:39Performance gains in likelihoods
- 11:24Future directions and challenges
