--- OA_place: repository OA_type: green _id: '19769' abstract: - lang: eng text: "Artifact to reproduce the experimental results presented in the article \"Sound Statistical Model Checking for Probabilities and Expected Rewards\" by Carlos E. Budde, Arnd Hartmanns, Tobias Meggendorfer, Maximilian Weininger, and Patrick Wienhöft (TACAS 2025).\r\n\r\nThe contents include all data and software (formal models, software tools, Python & bash scripts) used in the experimental evaluation presented in sections 3, 4, and 6 of the article. Detailed instructions on how to reproduce the results are bundled in the artifact." article_processing_charge: No author: - first_name: Carlos full_name: Budde, Carlos last_name: Budde - first_name: Arnd full_name: Hartmanns, Arnd last_name: Hartmanns - first_name: Tobias full_name: Meggendorfer, Tobias id: b21b0c15-30a2-11eb-80dc-f13ca25802e1 last_name: Meggendorfer orcid: 0000-0002-1712-2165 - first_name: Maximilian full_name: Weininger, Maximilian id: 02ab0197-cc70-11ed-ab61-918e71f56881 last_name: Weininger - first_name: Patrick full_name: Wienhöft, Patrick last_name: Wienhöft citation: ama: Budde C, Hartmanns A, Meggendorfer T, Weininger M, Wienhöft P. Sound statistical model checking for probabilities and expected rewards (experimental reproduction package). 2025. doi:10.5281/ZENODO.14602066 apa: Budde, C., Hartmanns, A., Meggendorfer, T., Weininger, M., & Wienhöft, P. (2025). Sound statistical model checking for probabilities and expected rewards (experimental reproduction package). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14602066 chicago: Budde, Carlos, Arnd Hartmanns, Tobias Meggendorfer, Maximilian Weininger, and Patrick Wienhöft. “Sound Statistical Model Checking for Probabilities and Expected Rewards (Experimental Reproduction Package).” Zenodo, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14602066. ieee: C. Budde, A. Hartmanns, T. Meggendorfer, M. Weininger, and P. Wienhöft, “Sound statistical model checking for probabilities and expected rewards (experimental reproduction package).” Zenodo, 2025. ista: Budde C, Hartmanns A, Meggendorfer T, Weininger M, Wienhöft P. 2025. Sound statistical model checking for probabilities and expected rewards (experimental reproduction package), Zenodo, 10.5281/ZENODO.14602066. mla: Budde, Carlos, et al. Sound Statistical Model Checking for Probabilities and Expected Rewards (Experimental Reproduction Package). Zenodo, 2025, doi:10.5281/ZENODO.14602066. short: C. Budde, A. Hartmanns, T. Meggendorfer, M. Weininger, P. Wienhöft, (2025). date_created: 2025-06-02T09:37:14Z date_published: 2025-01-07T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2025-06-02T09:45:41Z day: '07' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.5281/ZENODO.14602066 fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14602066 main_file_link: - open_access: '1' url: https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14602066 month: '01' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version publisher: Zenodo related_material: record: - id: '19742' relation: used_in_publication status: public status: public title: Sound statistical model checking for probabilities and expected rewards (experimental reproduction package) type: research_data_reference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher OA_type: hybrid _id: '19965' abstract: - lang: eng text: Multiagent learning is challenging when agents face mixed-motivation interactions, where conflicts of interest arise as agents independently try to optimize their respective outcomes. Recent advancements in evolutionary game theory have identified a class of “zero-determinant” strategies, which confer an agent with significant unilateral control over outcomes in repeated games. Building on these insights, we present a comprehensive generalization of zero-determinant strategies to stochastic games, encompassing dynamic environments. We propose an algorithm that allows an agent to discover strategies enforcing predetermined linear (or approximately linear) payoff relationships. Of particular interest is the relationship in which both payoffs are equal, which serves as a proxy for fairness in symmetric games. We demonstrate that an agent can discover strategies enforcing such relationships through experience alone, without coordinating with an opponent. In finding and using such a strategy, an agent (“enforcer”) can incentivize optimal and equitable outcomes, circumventing potential exploitation. In particular, from the opponent’s viewpoint, the enforcer transforms a mixed-motivation problem into a cooperative problem, paving the way for more collaboration and fairness in multiagent systems. acknowledgement: 'We gratefully acknowledge the support from the European Research Council (Starting Grant 850529: E-DIRECT) and the Max Planck Society (C.H.), the European Research Council (Consolidator Grant 863818: ForM-SMArt) (K.C.), the Shanghai Pujiang Program (No. 23PJ1405500) (Q.S.), the Army Research Office (Grant No. W911NF-18-1-0325) (N.E.L.), and the John Templeton Foundation (Grant No. 62281) (J.B.P.).' article_number: e2319927121 article_processing_charge: Yes (in subscription journal) article_type: original author: - first_name: Alex full_name: Mcavoy, Alex last_name: Mcavoy - first_name: Udari Madhushani full_name: Sehwag, Udari Madhushani last_name: Sehwag - first_name: Christian full_name: Hilbe, Christian id: 2FDF8F3C-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Hilbe orcid: 0000-0001-5116-955X - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Wolfram full_name: Barfuss, Wolfram last_name: Barfuss - first_name: Qi full_name: Su, Qi last_name: Su - first_name: Naomi Ehrich full_name: Leonard, Naomi Ehrich last_name: Leonard - first_name: Joshua B. full_name: Plotkin, Joshua B. last_name: Plotkin citation: ama: Mcavoy A, Sehwag UM, Hilbe C, et al. Unilateral incentive alignment in two-agent stochastic games. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2025;122(25). doi:10.1073/pnas.2319927121 apa: Mcavoy, A., Sehwag, U. M., Hilbe, C., Chatterjee, K., Barfuss, W., Su, Q., … Plotkin, J. B. (2025). Unilateral incentive alignment in two-agent stochastic games. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2319927121 chicago: Mcavoy, Alex, Udari Madhushani Sehwag, Christian Hilbe, Krishnendu Chatterjee, Wolfram Barfuss, Qi Su, Naomi Ehrich Leonard, and Joshua B. Plotkin. “Unilateral Incentive Alignment in Two-Agent Stochastic Games.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. National Academy of Sciences, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2319927121. ieee: A. Mcavoy et al., “Unilateral incentive alignment in two-agent stochastic games,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 122, no. 25. National Academy of Sciences, 2025. ista: Mcavoy A, Sehwag UM, Hilbe C, Chatterjee K, Barfuss W, Su Q, Leonard NE, Plotkin JB. 2025. Unilateral incentive alignment in two-agent stochastic games. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 122(25), e2319927121. mla: Mcavoy, Alex, et al. “Unilateral Incentive Alignment in Two-Agent Stochastic Games.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 122, no. 25, e2319927121, National Academy of Sciences, 2025, doi:10.1073/pnas.2319927121. short: A. Mcavoy, U.M. Sehwag, C. Hilbe, K. Chatterjee, W. Barfuss, Q. Su, N.E. Leonard, J.B. Plotkin, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122 (2025). date_created: 2025-07-06T22:01:23Z date_published: 2025-06-24T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2025-09-30T13:47:14Z day: '24' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1073/pnas.2319927121 ec_funded: 1 external_id: isi: - '001522351900001' pmid: - '40523172' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: 3b35befd959a3e37aa9080a64a6afaf3 content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-07-08T05:52:26Z date_updated: 2025-07-08T05:52:26Z file_id: '19972' file_name: 2025_PNAS_McAvoy.pdf file_size: 29525932 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-07-08T05:52:26Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2319927121 has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 122' isi: 1 issue: '25' language: - iso: eng license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ month: '06' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version pmid: 1 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences publication_identifier: eissn: - 1091-6490 issn: - 0027-8424 publication_status: published publisher: National Academy of Sciences quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Unilateral incentive alignment in two-agent stochastic games tmp: image: /images/cc_by_nc_nd.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) short: CC BY-NC-ND (4.0) type: journal_article user_id: 317138e5-6ab7-11ef-aa6d-ffef3953e345 volume: 122 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher OA_type: hybrid _id: '20053' abstract: - lang: eng text: "Liquid democracy is a transitive vote delegation mechanism over voting graphs. It enables each voter to delegate their vote(s) to another better-informed voter, with the goal of collectively making a better decision. The question of whether liquid democracy outperforms direct voting has been previously studied in the context of local delegation mechanisms (where voters can only delegate to someone in their neighbourhood) and binary decision problems. It has previously been shown that it is impossible for local delegation mechanisms to outperform direct voting in general graphs. This raises the question: for which classes of graphs do local delegation mechanisms yield good results?\r\nIn this work, we analyse (1) properties of specific graphs and (2) properties of local delegation mechanisms on these graphs, determining where local delegation actually outperforms direct voting. We show that a critical graph property enabling liquid democracy is that the voting outcome of local delegation mechanisms preserves a sufficient amount of variance, thereby avoiding situations where delegation falls behind direct voting1. These insights allow us to prove our main results, namely that there exist local delegation mechanisms that perform no worse and in fact quantitatively better than direct voting in natural graph topologies like complete, random d-regular, and bounded degree graphs, lending a more nuanced perspective to previous impossibility results." acknowledgement: This work was partially supported by MOE-T2EP20122-0014 (DataDriven Distributed Algorithms), German Research Foundation (DFG) project ReNO (SPP 2378) from 2023-2027, ERC CoG 863818 (ForMSMArt) and Austrian Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/COE12. article_processing_charge: No author: - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Seth full_name: Gilbert, Seth last_name: Gilbert - first_name: Stefan full_name: Schmid, Stefan last_name: Schmid - first_name: Jakub full_name: Svoboda, Jakub id: 130759D2-D7DD-11E9-87D2-DE0DE6697425 last_name: Svoboda orcid: 0000-0002-1419-3267 - first_name: Michelle X full_name: Yeo, Michelle X id: 2D82B818-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Yeo orcid: 0009-0001-3676-4809 citation: ama: 'Chatterjee K, Gilbert S, Schmid S, Svoboda J, Yeo MX. When is liquid democracy possible?: On the manipulation of variance. In: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing. Association for Computing Machinery; 2025:241-251. doi:10.1145/3732772.3733544' apa: 'Chatterjee, K., Gilbert, S., Schmid, S., Svoboda, J., & Yeo, M. X. (2025). When is liquid democracy possible?: On the manipulation of variance. In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (pp. 241–251). Huatulco, Mexico: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3732772.3733544' chicago: 'Chatterjee, Krishnendu, Seth Gilbert, Stefan Schmid, Jakub Svoboda, and Michelle X Yeo. “When Is Liquid Democracy Possible?: On the Manipulation of Variance.” In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, 241–51. Association for Computing Machinery, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1145/3732772.3733544.' ieee: 'K. Chatterjee, S. Gilbert, S. Schmid, J. Svoboda, and M. X. Yeo, “When is liquid democracy possible?: On the manipulation of variance,” in Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, Huatulco, Mexico, 2025, pp. 241–251.' ista: 'Chatterjee K, Gilbert S, Schmid S, Svoboda J, Yeo MX. 2025. When is liquid democracy possible?: On the manipulation of variance. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing. PODC: Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, 241–251.' mla: 'Chatterjee, Krishnendu, et al. “When Is Liquid Democracy Possible?: On the Manipulation of Variance.” Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, Association for Computing Machinery, 2025, pp. 241–51, doi:10.1145/3732772.3733544.' short: K. Chatterjee, S. Gilbert, S. Schmid, J. Svoboda, M.X. Yeo, in:, Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, Association for Computing Machinery, 2025, pp. 241–251. conference: end_date: 2025-06-20 location: Huatulco, Mexico name: 'PODC: Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing' start_date: 2025-06-16 corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-07-21T08:18:26Z date_published: 2025-06-13T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-02-16T11:46:51Z day: '13' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh - _id: KrPi doi: 10.1145/3732772.3733544 ec_funded: 1 external_id: isi: - '001525534800030' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: cd628fe54d96e9fc6cc789bb8145422b content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-08-05T07:15:31Z date_updated: 2025-08-05T07:15:31Z file_id: '20122' file_name: 2025_PODC_Chatterjee.pdf file_size: 783297 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-08-05T07:15:31Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3732772.3733544 has_accepted_license: '1' isi: 1 language: - iso: eng main_file_link: - open_access: '1' url: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/745 month: '06' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: 241-251 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' publication: Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing publication_identifier: isbn: - '9798400718854' publication_status: published publisher: Association for Computing Machinery quality_controlled: '1' status: public title: 'When is liquid democracy possible?: On the manipulation of variance' tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 year: '2025' ... --- APC_amount: 4493,27 EUR DOAJ_listed: '1' OA_place: publisher OA_type: gold PlanS_conform: '1' _id: '20254' abstract: - lang: eng text: 'We examine population structures for their ability to maintain diversity in neutral evolution. We use the general framework of evolutionary graph theory and consider birth–death (bd) and death–birth (db) updating. The population is of size N. Initially all individuals represent different types. The basic question is: what is the time TN until one type takes over the population? This time is known as consensus time in computer science and as total coalescent time in evolutionary biology. For the complete graph, it is known that TN is quadratic in N for db and bd. For the cycle, we prove that TN is cubic in N for db and bd. For the star, we prove that TN is cubic for bd and quasilinear (N log N) for db. For the double star, we show that TN is quartic for bd. We derive upper and lower bounds for all undirected graphs for bd and db. We also show the Pareto front of graphs (of size N = 8) that maintain diversity the longest for bd and db. Further, we show that some graphs that quickly homogenize can maintain high levels of diversity longer than graphs that slowly homogenize. For directed graphs, we give simple contracting star-like structures that have superexponential time scales for maintaining diversity.' acknowledgement: J.S. and K.C. were supported by the European Research Council CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) and Austrian Science Fund 10.55776/COE12. J.T. was supported by GAČR grant 25-17377S and by Charles Univ. projects UNCE 24/SCI/008 and PRIMUS 24/SCI/012. article_number: pgaf252 article_processing_charge: Yes article_type: original arxiv: 1 author: - first_name: David A. full_name: Brewster, David A. last_name: Brewster - first_name: Jakub full_name: Svoboda, Jakub id: 130759D2-D7DD-11E9-87D2-DE0DE6697425 last_name: Svoboda orcid: 0000-0002-1419-3267 - first_name: Dylan full_name: Roscow, Dylan last_name: Roscow - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Josef full_name: Tkadlec, Josef id: 3F24CCC8-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Tkadlec orcid: 0000-0002-1097-9684 - first_name: Martin A. full_name: Nowak, Martin A. last_name: Nowak citation: ama: Brewster DA, Svoboda J, Roscow D, Chatterjee K, Tkadlec J, Nowak MA. Maintaining diversity in structured populations. PNAS Nexus. 2025;4(8). doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf252 apa: Brewster, D. A., Svoboda, J., Roscow, D., Chatterjee, K., Tkadlec, J., & Nowak, M. A. (2025). Maintaining diversity in structured populations. PNAS Nexus. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf252 chicago: Brewster, David A., Jakub Svoboda, Dylan Roscow, Krishnendu Chatterjee, Josef Tkadlec, and Martin A. Nowak. “Maintaining Diversity in Structured Populations.” PNAS Nexus. Oxford University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf252. ieee: D. A. Brewster, J. Svoboda, D. Roscow, K. Chatterjee, J. Tkadlec, and M. A. Nowak, “Maintaining diversity in structured populations,” PNAS Nexus, vol. 4, no. 8. Oxford University Press, 2025. ista: Brewster DA, Svoboda J, Roscow D, Chatterjee K, Tkadlec J, Nowak MA. 2025. Maintaining diversity in structured populations. PNAS Nexus. 4(8), pgaf252. mla: Brewster, David A., et al. “Maintaining Diversity in Structured Populations.” PNAS Nexus, vol. 4, no. 8, pgaf252, Oxford University Press, 2025, doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf252. short: D.A. Brewster, J. Svoboda, D. Roscow, K. Chatterjee, J. Tkadlec, M.A. Nowak, PNAS Nexus 4 (2025). date_created: 2025-08-31T22:01:32Z date_published: 2025-08-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-06-11T09:11:17Z day: '01' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf252 ec_funded: 1 external_id: arxiv: - '2503.09841' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: 8a5e82c6f842e3220ec96028c9374b69 content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-09-03T06:20:08Z date_updated: 2025-09-03T06:20:08Z file_id: '20280' file_name: 2025_PNASNexus_Brewster.pdf file_size: 1086419 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-09-03T06:20:08Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf252 has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 4' issue: '8' language: - iso: eng month: '08' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' publication: PNAS Nexus publication_identifier: eissn: - 2752-6542 publication_status: published publisher: Oxford University Press quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Maintaining diversity in structured populations tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: journal_article user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 4 year: '2025' ... --- _id: '20610' abstract: - lang: eng text: "Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a fundamental model of decision making which exhibit non-deterministic choice as well as probabilistic uncertainty. Traditionally, verification assumes exact knowledge of the probabilities that govern the behaviour of an MDP. However, this assumption often is unrealistic, e.g. when modelling cyber-physical systems or biological processes. There, we can employ statistical model checking (SMC) to obtain an estimate of the MDP’s value (e.g. the maximal probability of reaching a goal state) that is close to the true value with high confidence (probably approximately correct). Model-based SMC algorithms sample the MDP and build a model of it by estimating all transition probabilities, essentially for every transition answering the question: “What are the odds?” However, so far the statistical methods employed by state-of-the-art SMC verification algorithms are quite naive or even compromise the correctness guarantees.\r\n\r\nOur first contribution is to survey, categorize, and analyse statistical methods, identifying those few that are most efficient and that provide suitable guarantees for the verification setting. Secondly, we propose improvements that exploit structural knowledge of the MDP. Both contributions generalize to many types of problem statements as they are largely independent of the setting. Moreover, our experimental evaluation shows that they lead to significant gains, reducing the number of samples that an SMC algorithm has to collect by up to two orders of magnitude." acknowledgement: This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 10103441, the ERC Starting Grant DEUCE (101077178) and the DFG through the Cluster of Excellence EXC 2050/1 (CeTI, project ID 390696704, as part of Germany’s Excellence Strategy) and the DFG grant 389792660 as part of TRR 248 (see https://perspicuous-computing.science). alternative_title: - LNCS article_processing_charge: No author: - first_name: Tobias full_name: Meggendorfer, Tobias id: b21b0c15-30a2-11eb-80dc-f13ca25802e1 last_name: Meggendorfer orcid: 0000-0002-1712-2165 - first_name: Maximilian full_name: Weininger, Maximilian id: 02ab0197-cc70-11ed-ab61-918e71f56881 last_name: Weininger orcid: 0000-0002-0163-2152 - first_name: Patrick full_name: Wienhöft, Patrick last_name: Wienhöft citation: ama: 'Meggendorfer T, Weininger M, Wienhöft P. What are the odds? Improving statistical model checking of Markov decision processes. In: Second International Joint Conference on QEST+FORMATS. Vol 16143. Springer Nature; 2025:195-218. doi:10.1007/978-3-032-05792-1_11' apa: 'Meggendorfer, T., Weininger, M., & Wienhöft, P. (2025). What are the odds? Improving statistical model checking of Markov decision processes. In Second International Joint Conference on QEST+FORMATS (Vol. 16143, pp. 195–218). Aarhus, Denmark: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-05792-1_11' chicago: Meggendorfer, Tobias, Maximilian Weininger, and Patrick Wienhöft. “What Are the Odds? Improving Statistical Model Checking of Markov Decision Processes.” In Second International Joint Conference on QEST+FORMATS, 16143:195–218. Springer Nature, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-05792-1_11. ieee: T. Meggendorfer, M. Weininger, and P. Wienhöft, “What are the odds? Improving statistical model checking of Markov decision processes,” in Second International Joint Conference on QEST+FORMATS, Aarhus, Denmark, 2025, vol. 16143, pp. 195–218. ista: 'Meggendorfer T, Weininger M, Wienhöft P. 2025. What are the odds? Improving statistical model checking of Markov decision processes. Second International Joint Conference on QEST+FORMATS. QEST-FORMATS: International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of Systems and Formal Modeling and Analysis of Timed Systems, LNCS, vol. 16143, 195–218.' mla: Meggendorfer, Tobias, et al. “What Are the Odds? Improving Statistical Model Checking of Markov Decision Processes.” Second International Joint Conference on QEST+FORMATS, vol. 16143, Springer Nature, 2025, pp. 195–218, doi:10.1007/978-3-032-05792-1_11. short: T. Meggendorfer, M. Weininger, P. Wienhöft, in:, Second International Joint Conference on QEST+FORMATS, Springer Nature, 2025, pp. 195–218. conference: end_date: 2025-08-28 location: Aarhus, Denmark name: 'QEST-FORMATS: International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of Systems and Formal Modeling and Analysis of Timed Systems' start_date: 2025-08-26 date_created: 2025-11-09T23:01:34Z date_published: 2025-10-02T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2025-11-10T08:06:27Z day: '02' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1007/978-3-032-05792-1_11 ec_funded: 1 fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-05792-1_11 intvolume: ' 16143' language: - iso: eng month: '10' oa_version: None page: 195-218 project: - _id: fc2ed2f7-9c52-11eb-aca3-c01059dda49c call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '101034413' name: 'IST-BRIDGE: International postdoctoral program' publication: Second International Joint Conference on QEST+FORMATS publication_identifier: eissn: - 1611-3349 isbn: - '9783032057914' issn: - 0302-9743 publication_status: published publisher: Springer Nature quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: What are the odds? Improving statistical model checking of Markov decision processes type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 16143 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: repository OA_type: green _id: '20688' abstract: - lang: eng text: 'We consider two-player zero-sum concurrent stochastic games (CSGs) played on graphs with reachability and safety objectives. These include degenerate classes such as Markov decision processes or turn-based stochastic games, which can be solved by linear or quadratic programming; however, in practice, value iteration (VI) outperforms the other approaches and is the most implemented method. Similarly, for CSGs, this practical performance makes VI an attractive alternative to the standard theoretical solution via the existential theory of reals.VI starts with an under-approximation of the sought values for each state and iteratively updates them, traditionally terminating once two consecutive approximations are ϵ-close. However, this stopping criterion lacks guarantees on the precision of the approximation, which is the goal of this work. We provide bounded (a.k.a. interval) VI for CSGs: it complements standard VI with a converging sequence of over-approximations and terminates once the over- and under-approximations are ϵ-close.' acknowledgement: This research was funded in part by the German Research Foundation (DFG) project 427755713 GOPro, the MUNI Award in Science and Humanities (MUNI/I/1757/2021) of the Grant Agency of Masaryk University, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101034413, and the ERC Starting Grant DEUCE (101077178). article_processing_charge: No arxiv: 1 author: - first_name: Marta full_name: Grobelna, Marta last_name: Grobelna - first_name: Jan full_name: Kretinsky, Jan id: 44CEF464-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Kretinsky orcid: 0000-0002-8122-2881 - first_name: Maximilian full_name: Weininger, Maximilian id: 02ab0197-cc70-11ed-ab61-918e71f56881 last_name: Weininger orcid: 0000-0002-0163-2152 citation: ama: 'Grobelna M, Kretinsky J, Weininger M. Stopping criteria for value iteration on concurrent stochastic reachability and safety games. In: 2025 40th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science. IEEE; 2025:568-580. doi:10.1109/lics65433.2025.00049' apa: 'Grobelna, M., Kretinsky, J., & Weininger, M. (2025). Stopping criteria for value iteration on concurrent stochastic reachability and safety games. In 2025 40th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (pp. 568–580). Singapore, Singapore: IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/lics65433.2025.00049' chicago: Grobelna, Marta, Jan Kretinsky, and Maximilian Weininger. “Stopping Criteria for Value Iteration on Concurrent Stochastic Reachability and Safety Games.” In 2025 40th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, 568–80. IEEE, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1109/lics65433.2025.00049. ieee: M. Grobelna, J. Kretinsky, and M. Weininger, “Stopping criteria for value iteration on concurrent stochastic reachability and safety games,” in 2025 40th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, Singapore, Singapore, 2025, pp. 568–580. ista: 'Grobelna M, Kretinsky J, Weininger M. 2025. Stopping criteria for value iteration on concurrent stochastic reachability and safety games. 2025 40th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science. LICS: Logic in Computer Science, 568–580.' mla: Grobelna, Marta, et al. “Stopping Criteria for Value Iteration on Concurrent Stochastic Reachability and Safety Games.” 2025 40th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, IEEE, 2025, pp. 568–80, doi:10.1109/lics65433.2025.00049. short: M. Grobelna, J. Kretinsky, M. Weininger, in:, 2025 40th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, IEEE, 2025, pp. 568–580. conference: end_date: 2025-06-26 location: Singapore, Singapore name: 'LICS: Logic in Computer Science' start_date: 2025-06-23 corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-11-24T14:23:49Z date_published: 2025-10-09T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2025-11-26T07:34:19Z day: '09' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1109/lics65433.2025.00049 ec_funded: 1 external_id: arxiv: - '2505.21087' fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1109/lics65433.2025.00049 language: - iso: eng main_file_link: - open_access: '1' url: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.21087 month: '10' oa: 1 oa_version: Preprint page: 568-580 project: - _id: fc2ed2f7-9c52-11eb-aca3-c01059dda49c call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '101034413' name: 'IST-BRIDGE: International postdoctoral program' publication: 2025 40th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science publication_identifier: eisbn: - '9798331579005' publication_status: published publisher: IEEE quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Stopping criteria for value iteration on concurrent stochastic reachability and safety games type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher OA_type: hybrid _id: '19743' abstract: - lang: eng text: The possibility of errors in human-engineered formal verification software, such as model checkers, poses a serious threat to the purpose of these tools. An established approach to mitigate this problem are certificates—lightweight, easy-to-check proofs of the verification results. In this paper, we develop novel certificates for model checking of Markov decision processes (MDPs) with quantitative reachability and expected reward properties. Our approach is conceptually simple and relies almost exclusively on elementary fixed point theory. Our certificates work for arbitrary finite MDPs and can be readily computed with little overhead using standard algorithms. We formalize the soundness of our certificates in Isabelle/HOL and provide a formally verified certificate checker. Moreover, we augment existing algorithms in the probabilistic model checker Storm with the ability to produce certificates and demonstrate practical applicability by conducting the first formal certification of the reference results in the Quantitative Verification Benchmark Set. acknowledgement: This project has received funding from the ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/COE12, a KI-Starter grant from the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft NRW, the DFG RTG 378803395 (ConVeY), the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programmes under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement Nos. 101034413 (IST-BRIDGE) and 101008233 (MISSION), and the DFG RTG 2236 (UnRAVeL). Experiments were performed with computing resources granted by RWTH Aachen University under project rwth1632. alternative_title: - LNCS article_processing_charge: No arxiv: 1 author: - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Tim full_name: Quatmann, Tim last_name: Quatmann - first_name: Maximilian full_name: Schäffeler, Maximilian last_name: Schäffeler - first_name: Maximilian full_name: Weininger, Maximilian id: 02ab0197-cc70-11ed-ab61-918e71f56881 last_name: Weininger orcid: 0000-0002-0163-2152 - first_name: Tobias full_name: Winkler, Tobias last_name: Winkler - first_name: Daniel full_name: Zilken, Daniel id: d8ebc24a-3f98-11f0-9044-8296d4f39ab3 last_name: Zilken citation: ama: 'Chatterjee K, Quatmann T, Schäffeler M, Weininger M, Winkler T, Zilken D. Fixed point certificates for reachability and expected rewards in MDPs. In: 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems. Vol 15697. Springer Nature; 2025:130-151. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_7' apa: 'Chatterjee, K., Quatmann, T., Schäffeler, M., Weininger, M., Winkler, T., & Zilken, D. (2025). Fixed point certificates for reachability and expected rewards in MDPs. In 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (Vol. 15697, pp. 130–151). Hamilton, ON, Canada: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_7' chicago: Chatterjee, Krishnendu, Tim Quatmann, Maximilian Schäffeler, Maximilian Weininger, Tobias Winkler, and Daniel Zilken. “Fixed Point Certificates for Reachability and Expected Rewards in MDPs.” In 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, 15697:130–51. Springer Nature, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_7. ieee: K. Chatterjee, T. Quatmann, M. Schäffeler, M. Weininger, T. Winkler, and D. Zilken, “Fixed point certificates for reachability and expected rewards in MDPs,” in 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, Hamilton, ON, Canada, 2025, vol. 15697, pp. 130–151. ista: 'Chatterjee K, Quatmann T, Schäffeler M, Weininger M, Winkler T, Zilken D. 2025. Fixed point certificates for reachability and expected rewards in MDPs. 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems. TACAS: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, LNCS, vol. 15697, 130–151.' mla: Chatterjee, Krishnendu, et al. “Fixed Point Certificates for Reachability and Expected Rewards in MDPs.” 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, vol. 15697, Springer Nature, 2025, pp. 130–51, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_7. short: K. Chatterjee, T. Quatmann, M. Schäffeler, M. Weininger, T. Winkler, D. Zilken, in:, 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, Springer Nature, 2025, pp. 130–151. conference: end_date: 2025-05-08 location: Hamilton, ON, Canada name: 'TACAS: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems' start_date: 2025-05-03 corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-05-25T22:17:09Z date_published: 2025-05-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T06:57:17Z day: '01' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_7 ec_funded: 1 external_id: arxiv: - '2501.11467' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: 64b7f46ef05649b87b827248045c7645 content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-06-02T10:49:52Z date_updated: 2025-06-02T10:49:52Z file_id: '19772' file_name: 2025_TACAS_ChatterjeeKrish.pdf file_size: 732136 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-06-02T10:49:52Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_7 has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 15697' language: - iso: eng month: '05' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: 130-151 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: fc2ed2f7-9c52-11eb-aca3-c01059dda49c call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '101034413' name: 'IST-BRIDGE: International postdoctoral program' - _id: 4029cfc7-b034-11f1-9e55-88ab2ff3b6ee grant_number: COE12 name: Bilateral Artificial Intelligence (Chatterjee) publication: 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems publication_identifier: eissn: - 1611-3349 isbn: - '9783031906527' issn: - 0302-9743 publication_status: published publisher: Springer Nature quality_controlled: '1' related_material: record: - id: '19771' relation: research_data status: public scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Fixed point certificates for reachability and expected rewards in MDPs tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 15697 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher OA_type: hybrid _id: '19740' abstract: - lang: eng text: Two standard models for probabilistic systems are Markov chains (MCs) and Markov decision processes (MDPs). Classic objectives for such probabilistic models for control and planning problems are reachability and stochastic shortest path. The widely studied algorithmic approach for these problems is the Value Iteration (VI) algorithm which iteratively applies local updates called Bellman updates. There are many practical approaches for VI in the literature but they all require exponentially many Bellman updates for MCs in the worst case. A preprocessing step is an algorithm that is discrete, graph-theoretical, and requires linear space. An important open question is whether, after a polynomial-time preprocessing, VI can be achieved with sub-exponentially many Bellman updates. In this work, we present a new approach for VI based on guessing values. Our theoretical contributions are twofold. First, for MCs, we present an almost-linear-time preprocessing algorithm after which, along with guessing values, VI requires only subexponentially many Bellman updates. Second, we present an improved analysis of the speed of convergence of VI for MDPs. Finally, we present a practical algorithm for MDPs based on our new approach. Experimental results show that our approach provides a considerable improvement over existing VI-based approaches on several benchmark examples from the literature. acknowledgement: This research was partially supported by the ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) grant and Austrian Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/COE12 grant. alternative_title: - LNCS article_processing_charge: No arxiv: 1 author: - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Mahdi full_name: Jafariraviz, Mahdi last_name: Jafariraviz - first_name: Raimundo J full_name: Saona Urmeneta, Raimundo J id: BD1DF4C4-D767-11E9-B658-BC13E6697425 last_name: Saona Urmeneta orcid: 0000-0001-5103-038X - first_name: Jakub full_name: Svoboda, Jakub id: 130759D2-D7DD-11E9-87D2-DE0DE6697425 last_name: Svoboda orcid: 0000-0002-1419-3267 citation: ama: 'Chatterjee K, Jafariraviz M, Saona Urmeneta RJ, Svoboda J. Value iteration with guessing for Markov chains and Markov decision processes. In: 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems. Vol 15697. Springer Nature; 2025:217-236. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_11' apa: 'Chatterjee, K., Jafariraviz, M., Saona Urmeneta, R. J., & Svoboda, J. (2025). Value iteration with guessing for Markov chains and Markov decision processes. In 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (Vol. 15697, pp. 217–236). Hamilton, ON, Canada: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_11' chicago: Chatterjee, Krishnendu, Mahdi Jafariraviz, Raimundo J Saona Urmeneta, and Jakub Svoboda. “Value Iteration with Guessing for Markov Chains and Markov Decision Processes.” In 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, 15697:217–36. Springer Nature, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_11. ieee: K. Chatterjee, M. Jafariraviz, R. J. Saona Urmeneta, and J. Svoboda, “Value iteration with guessing for Markov chains and Markov decision processes,” in 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, Hamilton, ON, Canada, 2025, vol. 15697, pp. 217–236. ista: 'Chatterjee K, Jafariraviz M, Saona Urmeneta RJ, Svoboda J. 2025. Value iteration with guessing for Markov chains and Markov decision processes. 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems. TACAS: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, LNCS, vol. 15697, 217–236.' mla: Chatterjee, Krishnendu, et al. “Value Iteration with Guessing for Markov Chains and Markov Decision Processes.” 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, vol. 15697, Springer Nature, 2025, pp. 217–36, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_11. short: K. Chatterjee, M. Jafariraviz, R.J. Saona Urmeneta, J. Svoboda, in:, 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, Springer Nature, 2025, pp. 217–236. conference: end_date: 2025-05-08 location: Hamilton, ON, Canada name: 'TACAS: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems' start_date: 2025-05-03 corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-05-25T22:17:06Z date_published: 2025-05-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T06:56:56Z day: '01' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_11 ec_funded: 1 external_id: arxiv: - '2505.06769' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: 45da6efbcbed20aada16c48c8e55e2d6 content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-06-02T07:31:12Z date_updated: 2025-06-02T07:31:12Z file_id: '19767' file_name: 2025_TACAS_Chatterjee.pdf file_size: 557481 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-06-02T07:31:12Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_11 has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 15697' language: - iso: eng month: '05' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: 217-236 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: 4029cfc7-b034-11f1-9e55-88ab2ff3b6ee grant_number: COE12 name: Bilateral Artificial Intelligence (Chatterjee) publication: 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems publication_identifier: eissn: - 1611-3349 isbn: - '9783031906527' issn: - 0302-9743 publication_status: published publisher: Springer Nature quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Value iteration with guessing for Markov chains and Markov decision processes tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 15697 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher OA_type: hybrid _id: '19744' abstract: - lang: eng text: We consider the problem of refuting equivalence of probabilistic programs, i.e., the problem of proving that two probabilistic programs induce different output distributions. We study this problem in the context of programs with conditioning (i.e., with observe and score statements), where the output distribution is conditioned by the event that all the observe statements along a run evaluate to true, and where the probability densities of different runs may be updated via the score statements. Building on a recent work on programs without conditioning, we present a new equivalence refutation method for programs with conditioning. Our method is based on weighted restarting, a novel transformation of probabilistic programs with conditioning to the output equivalent probabilistic programs without conditioning that we introduce in this work. Our method is the first to be both a) fully automated, and b) providing provably correct answers. We demonstrate the applicability of our method on a set of programs from the probabilistic inference literature. acknowledgement: This work was partially supported by ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) and Austrian Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/COE12. Petr Novotný is supported by the Czech Science Foundation grant no. GA23-06963S. alternative_title: - LNCS article_processing_charge: No arxiv: 1 author: - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Ehsan full_name: Kafshdar Goharshadi, Ehsan id: 103b4fa0-896a-11ed-bdf8-87b697bef40d last_name: Kafshdar Goharshadi orcid: 0000-0002-8595-0587 - first_name: Petr full_name: Novotný, Petr id: 3CC3B868-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Novotný - first_name: Dorde full_name: Zikelic, Dorde id: 294AA7A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Zikelic orcid: 0000-0002-4681-1699 citation: ama: 'Chatterjee K, Goharshady E, Novotný P, Zikelic D. Refuting equivalence in probabilistic programs with conditioning. In: 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems. Vol 15697. Springer Nature; 2025:279-300. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_14' apa: 'Chatterjee, K., Goharshady, E., Novotný, P., & Zikelic, D. (2025). Refuting equivalence in probabilistic programs with conditioning. In 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (Vol. 15697, pp. 279–300). Hamilton, ON, Canada: Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_14' chicago: Chatterjee, Krishnendu, Ehsan Goharshady, Petr Novotný, and Dorde Zikelic. “Refuting Equivalence in Probabilistic Programs with Conditioning.” In 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, 15697:279–300. Springer Nature, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_14. ieee: K. Chatterjee, E. Goharshady, P. Novotný, and D. Zikelic, “Refuting equivalence in probabilistic programs with conditioning,” in 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, Hamilton, ON, Canada, 2025, vol. 15697, pp. 279–300. ista: 'Chatterjee K, Goharshady E, Novotný P, Zikelic D. 2025. Refuting equivalence in probabilistic programs with conditioning. 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems. TACAS: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, LNCS, vol. 15697, 279–300.' mla: Chatterjee, Krishnendu, et al. “Refuting Equivalence in Probabilistic Programs with Conditioning.” 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, vol. 15697, Springer Nature, 2025, pp. 279–300, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_14. short: K. Chatterjee, E. Goharshady, P. Novotný, D. Zikelic, in:, 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, Springer Nature, 2025, pp. 279–300. conference: end_date: 2025-05-08 location: Hamilton, ON, Canada name: 'TACAS: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems' start_date: 2025-05-03 corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-05-25T22:17:10Z date_published: 2025-05-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T06:57:43Z day: '01' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_14 ec_funded: 1 external_id: arxiv: - '2501.06579' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: 7dcd85e7e753bfa994c10b3cf9ebc185 content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-06-02T11:13:49Z date_updated: 2025-06-02T11:13:49Z file_id: '19773' file_name: 2025_TACAS_Chatterjee_Goharshadi.pdf file_size: 532181 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-06-02T11:13:49Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-90653-4_14 has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 15697' language: - iso: eng month: '05' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: 279-300 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: 4029cfc7-b034-11f1-9e55-88ab2ff3b6ee grant_number: COE12 name: Bilateral Artificial Intelligence (Chatterjee) publication: 31st International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems publication_identifier: eissn: - 1611-3349 isbn: - '9783031906527' issn: - 0302-9743 publication_status: published publisher: Springer Nature quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Refuting equivalence in probabilistic programs with conditioning tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 15697 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: repository OA_type: green _id: '19667' abstract: - lang: eng text: The problem of checking satisfiability of linear real arithmetic (LRA) and non-linear real arithmetic (NRA) formulas has broad applications, in particular, they are at the heart of logic-related applications such as logic for artificial intelligence, program analysis, etc. While there has been much work on checking satisfiability of unquantified LRA and NRA formulas, the problem of checking satisfiability of quantified LRA and NRA formulas remains a significant challenge. The main bottleneck in the existing methods is a computationally expensive quantifier elimination step. In this work, we propose a novel method for efficient quantifier elimination in quantified LRA and NRA formulas. We propose a template-based Skolemization approach, where we automatically synthesize linear/polynomial Skolem functions in order to eliminate quantifiers in the formula. The key technical ingredient in our approach are Positivstellensätze theorems from algebraic geometry, which allow for an efficient manipulation of polynomial inequalities. Our method offers a range of appealing theoretical properties combined with a strong practical performance. On the theory side, our method is sound, semi-complete, and runs in subexponential time and polynomial space, as opposed to existing sound and complete quantifier elimination methods that run in doubly-exponential time and at least exponential space. On the practical side, our experiments show superior performance compared to state of the art SMT solvers in terms of the number of solved instances and runtime, both on LRA and on NRA benchmarks. acknowledgement: This work was partially funded by ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) and Austrian Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/COE12. article_processing_charge: No arxiv: 1 author: - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Ehsan full_name: Kafshdar Goharshadi, Ehsan id: 103b4fa0-896a-11ed-bdf8-87b697bef40d last_name: Kafshdar Goharshadi orcid: 0000-0002-8595-0587 - first_name: Mehrdad full_name: Karrabi, Mehrdad id: 67638922-f394-11eb-9cf6-f20423e08757 last_name: Karrabi orcid: 0009-0007-5253-9170 - first_name: Harshit J. full_name: Motwani, Harshit J. last_name: Motwani - first_name: Maximilian full_name: Seeliger, Maximilian last_name: Seeliger - first_name: Dorde full_name: Zikelic, Dorde id: 294AA7A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Zikelic orcid: 0000-0002-4681-1699 citation: ama: 'Chatterjee K, Goharshady E, Karrabi M, Motwani HJ, Seeliger M, Zikelic D. Quantified linear and polynomial arithmetic satisfiability via template-based skolemization. In: Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Vol 39. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence; 2025:11158-11166. doi:10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33213' apa: 'Chatterjee, K., Goharshady, E., Karrabi, M., Motwani, H. J., Seeliger, M., & Zikelic, D. (2025). Quantified linear and polynomial arithmetic satisfiability via template-based skolemization. In Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 39, pp. 11158–11166). Philadelphia, PA, United States: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33213' chicago: Chatterjee, Krishnendu, Ehsan Goharshady, Mehrdad Karrabi, Harshit J. Motwani, Maximilian Seeliger, and Dorde Zikelic. “Quantified Linear and Polynomial Arithmetic Satisfiability via Template-Based Skolemization.” In Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 39:11158–66. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33213. ieee: K. Chatterjee, E. Goharshady, M. Karrabi, H. J. Motwani, M. Seeliger, and D. Zikelic, “Quantified linear and polynomial arithmetic satisfiability via template-based skolemization,” in Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Philadelphia, PA, United States, 2025, vol. 39, no. 11, pp. 11158–11166. ista: 'Chatterjee K, Goharshady E, Karrabi M, Motwani HJ, Seeliger M, Zikelic D. 2025. Quantified linear and polynomial arithmetic satisfiability via template-based skolemization. Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. AAAI: Conference on Artificial Intelligence vol. 39, 11158–11166.' mla: Chatterjee, Krishnendu, et al. “Quantified Linear and Polynomial Arithmetic Satisfiability via Template-Based Skolemization.” Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, vol. 39, no. 11, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2025, pp. 11158–66, doi:10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33213. short: K. Chatterjee, E. Goharshady, M. Karrabi, H.J. Motwani, M. Seeliger, D. Zikelic, in:, Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2025, pp. 11158–11166. conference: end_date: 2025-03-04 location: Philadelphia, PA, United States name: 'AAAI: Conference on Artificial Intelligence' start_date: 2025-02-25 corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-05-11T22:02:39Z date_published: 2025-04-11T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T06:55:21Z day: '11' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33213 ec_funded: 1 external_id: arxiv: - '2412.16226' fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33213 intvolume: ' 39' issue: '11' language: - iso: eng main_file_link: - open_access: '1' url: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2412.16226 month: '04' oa: 1 oa_version: Preprint page: 11158-11166 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: 4029cfc7-b034-11f1-9e55-88ab2ff3b6ee grant_number: COE12 name: Bilateral Artificial Intelligence (Chatterjee) publication: Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence publication_identifier: eissn: - 2374-3468 issn: - 2159-5399 publication_status: published publisher: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Quantified linear and polynomial arithmetic satisfiability via template-based skolemization type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 39 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: repository OA_type: green _id: '19669' abstract: - lang: eng text: 'We consider a class of optimization problems defined by a system of linear equations with min and max operators. This class of optimization problems has been studied under restrictive conditions, such as, (C1) the halting or stability condition; (C2) the non-negative coefficients condition; (C3) the sum upto 1 condition; and (C4) the only min or only max operator condition. Several seminal results in the literature focus on special cases. For example, turn-based stochastic games correspond to conditions C2 and C3; and Markov decision process to conditions C2, C3, and C4. However, the systematic computational complexity study of all the cases has not been explored, which we address in this work. Some highlights of our results are: with conditions C2 and C4, and with conditions C3 and C4, the problem is NP-complete, whereas with condition C1 only, the problem is in UP intersects coUP. Finally, we establish the computational complexity of the decision problem of checking the respective conditions.' acknowledgement: This research was partially supported by the ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) grant and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/COE12 grant. article_processing_charge: No arxiv: 1 author: - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Ruichen full_name: Luo, Ruichen id: b391db08-1ffe-11ee-8b67-d18ddcfb5a14 last_name: Luo - first_name: Raimundo J full_name: Saona Urmeneta, Raimundo J id: BD1DF4C4-D767-11E9-B658-BC13E6697425 last_name: Saona Urmeneta orcid: 0000-0001-5103-038X - first_name: Jakub full_name: Svoboda, Jakub id: 130759D2-D7DD-11E9-87D2-DE0DE6697425 last_name: Svoboda orcid: 0000-0002-1419-3267 citation: ama: 'Chatterjee K, Luo R, Saona Urmeneta RJ, Svoboda J. Linear equations with min and max operators: Computational complexity. In: Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Vol 39. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence; 2025:11150-11157. doi:10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33212' apa: 'Chatterjee, K., Luo, R., Saona Urmeneta, R. J., & Svoboda, J. (2025). Linear equations with min and max operators: Computational complexity. In Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 39, pp. 11150–11157). Philadelphia, PA, United States: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33212' chicago: 'Chatterjee, Krishnendu, Ruichen Luo, Raimundo J Saona Urmeneta, and Jakub Svoboda. “Linear Equations with Min and Max Operators: Computational Complexity.” In Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 39:11150–57. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33212.' ieee: 'K. Chatterjee, R. Luo, R. J. Saona Urmeneta, and J. Svoboda, “Linear equations with min and max operators: Computational complexity,” in Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Philadelphia, PA, United States, 2025, vol. 39, no. 11, pp. 11150–11157.' ista: 'Chatterjee K, Luo R, Saona Urmeneta RJ, Svoboda J. 2025. Linear equations with min and max operators: Computational complexity. Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. AAAI: Conference on Artificial Intelligence vol. 39, 11150–11157.' mla: 'Chatterjee, Krishnendu, et al. “Linear Equations with Min and Max Operators: Computational Complexity.” Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, vol. 39, no. 11, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2025, pp. 11150–57, doi:10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33212.' short: K. Chatterjee, R. Luo, R.J. Saona Urmeneta, J. Svoboda, in:, Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2025, pp. 11150–11157. conference: end_date: 2025-03-04 location: Philadelphia, PA, United States name: 'AAAI: Conference on Artificial Intelligence' start_date: 2025-02-25 corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-05-11T22:02:40Z date_published: 2025-04-11T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T06:55:47Z day: '11' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33212 ec_funded: 1 external_id: arxiv: - '2412.12228' fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v39i11.33212 intvolume: ' 39' issue: '11' language: - iso: eng main_file_link: - open_access: '1' url: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2412.12228 month: '04' oa: 1 oa_version: Preprint page: 11150-11157 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: 4029cfc7-b034-11f1-9e55-88ab2ff3b6ee grant_number: COE12 name: Bilateral Artificial Intelligence (Chatterjee) publication: Proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence publication_identifier: eissn: - 2374-3468 issn: - 2159-5399 publication_status: published publisher: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: 'Linear equations with min and max operators: Computational complexity' type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 39 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: repository OA_type: green _id: '19771' abstract: - lang: eng text: "This artifact allows to review and reproduce the Isabelle proofs and practical experiments from the paper *Fixed Point Certificates for Reachability and Expected Rewards in MDPs*.\r\nThe contents are two-fold:\r\nFirst, the artifact contains a formally verified certificate checker for the certificates presented in the paper.\r\nThe formal Isabelle/HOL proofs of the background theory can be inspected, checked by Isabelle and the code extraction can be retraced.\r\n\r\nSecond, the artifact contains a modified version of the model checking tool `Storm` with support for certificate generation. Together with the provided scripts and benchmark files, this allows to reproduce the experiments from the paper.\r\nAn appropriate subset of the experiments is given to allow a review in a timely manner. In addition, original logfiles from our experiments are provided, allowing a detailed inspection.\r\n\r\nThe package includes convenient installation scripts for [the TACAS 2023 VM](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7113223) (based on Ubuntu 22.04).\r\nA native installation on Linux or macOS systems (including the newer ARM-based machines) is also possible." article_processing_charge: No author: - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Tim full_name: Quatmann, Tim last_name: Quatmann - first_name: Maximilian full_name: Schäffeler, Maximilian last_name: Schäffeler - first_name: Maximilian full_name: Weininger, Maximilian id: 02ab0197-cc70-11ed-ab61-918e71f56881 last_name: Weininger orcid: 0000-0002-0163-2152 - first_name: Tobias full_name: Winkler, Tobias last_name: Winkler - first_name: Daniel full_name: Zilken, Daniel id: d8ebc24a-3f98-11f0-9044-8296d4f39ab3 last_name: Zilken citation: ama: 'Chatterjee K, Quatmann T, Schäffeler M, Weininger M, Winkler T, Zilken D. Artifact: Fixed point certificates for reachability and expected rewards in MDPs. 2025. doi:10.5281/ZENODO.14626585' apa: 'Chatterjee, K., Quatmann, T., Schäffeler, M., Weininger, M., Winkler, T., & Zilken, D. (2025). Artifact: Fixed point certificates for reachability and expected rewards in MDPs. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14626585' chicago: 'Chatterjee, Krishnendu, Tim Quatmann, Maximilian Schäffeler, Maximilian Weininger, Tobias Winkler, and Daniel Zilken. “Artifact: Fixed Point Certificates for Reachability and Expected Rewards in MDPs.” Zenodo, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14626585.' ieee: 'K. Chatterjee, T. Quatmann, M. Schäffeler, M. Weininger, T. Winkler, and D. Zilken, “Artifact: Fixed point certificates for reachability and expected rewards in MDPs.” Zenodo, 2025.' ista: 'Chatterjee K, Quatmann T, Schäffeler M, Weininger M, Winkler T, Zilken D. 2025. Artifact: Fixed point certificates for reachability and expected rewards in MDPs, Zenodo, 10.5281/ZENODO.14626585.' mla: 'Chatterjee, Krishnendu, et al. Artifact: Fixed Point Certificates for Reachability and Expected Rewards in MDPs. Zenodo, 2025, doi:10.5281/ZENODO.14626585.' short: K. Chatterjee, T. Quatmann, M. Schäffeler, M. Weininger, T. Winkler, D. Zilken, (2025). date_created: 2025-06-02T10:13:24Z date_published: 2025-01-09T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T06:57:17Z day: '09' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.5281/ZENODO.14626585 fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14626585 main_file_link: - open_access: '1' url: https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14626585 month: '01' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version publisher: Zenodo related_material: record: - id: '19743' relation: used_in_publication status: public status: public title: 'Artifact: Fixed point certificates for reachability and expected rewards in MDPs' tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: research_data_reference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher _id: '19903' abstract: - lang: eng text: "Cooperation, that is, one person paying a cost for another's benefit, is a fundamental principle without which no form of society could exist. The extent to which humans cooperate with each other is also an essential feature that differentiates them from other animals. Cooperation occurs even in the absence of altruistic motivations, when it is selfishly incentivised by the expectation of a future reward. For example, many economic interactions are well described that way. This kind of cooperation requires that people exhibit reciprocal behaviour that acts as a mechanism that rewards cooperation.\r\nWith game-theoretic models, it is possible to formally study potential such mechanisms and under what conditions they can exist. This thesis contributes to this effort by analysing recently introduced models of cooperation that advance on previous work by taking into account the potential for pre-existing inequality among cooperating individuals as well as the different forms that reciprocity can take.\r\nIndividuals may differ both intrinsically, in their abilities, as well as extrinsically, in the amount of resources they have available. Allowing for such differences in a model of cooperation helps to understand how inequality affects the potential for, and outcomes of, cooperation among unequals. In this thesis, it is shown that in the presence of intrinsic inequality, a similar unequal distribution of resources can increase the potential for cooperation. This effect is stronger the smaller the group is in which cooperation takes place. It is also shown that under particular assumptions, if the unequal members of a group vary the size of their contributions to a cooperative effort over time, they can thereby increase their efficiency and improve the collective outcome.\r\nCooperative behaviour in a two-person interaction can be rewarded either by direct reciprocation whenever the same two people interact again, or indirectly by a third party who observed the interaction. In the latter case of indirect reciprocity, individuals are proximally rewarded by a good reputation, which ultimately translates to being rewarded with cooperative behaviour by others. This mechanism can enable selfishly motivated cooperation even in circumstances where individuals are unlikely to meet again, akin to how money facilitates trade. While these two forms of reciprocity have mostly been studied in isolation, this thesis analyses both direct and indirect reciprocity in a general model in order to compare their relative effectiveness under different circumstances. The contribution of this thesis is an extension of previous work regarding a specific kind of interaction, whose parameters allow for convenient mathematical analysis, to the most general set of possible interactions." acknowledgement: "The research for this thesis was supported by the European Research Council\r\n(grant agreements No. 863818 and No. 850529), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 754411),\r\nthe Austrian Science Fund (grant DOI 10.55776/COE12), the French Agence Nationale\r\nde la Recherche under the Programme d’investissements d’avenir (project reference 17-\r\nEURE-0010) and the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council\r\n(grant No. SR200100005, “Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future”)." alternative_title: - ISTA Thesis article_processing_charge: No author: - first_name: Valentin full_name: Hübner, Valentin id: 2c8aa207-dc7d-11ea-9b2f-f22972ecd910 last_name: Hübner orcid: 0009-0001-5009-4987 citation: ama: Hübner V. Reciprocity and inequality in social dilemmas. 2025. doi:10.15479/AT-ISTA-19903 apa: Hübner, V. (2025). Reciprocity and inequality in social dilemmas. Institute of Science and Technology Austria. https://doi.org/10.15479/AT-ISTA-19903 chicago: Hübner, Valentin. “Reciprocity and Inequality in Social Dilemmas.” Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2025. https://doi.org/10.15479/AT-ISTA-19903. ieee: V. Hübner, “Reciprocity and inequality in social dilemmas,” Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2025. ista: Hübner V. 2025. Reciprocity and inequality in social dilemmas. Institute of Science and Technology Austria. mla: Hübner, Valentin. Reciprocity and Inequality in Social Dilemmas. Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2025, doi:10.15479/AT-ISTA-19903. short: V. Hübner, Reciprocity and Inequality in Social Dilemmas, Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2025. corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-06-25T13:50:10Z date_published: 2025-06-25T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T06:58:24Z day: '25' ddc: - '519' degree_awarded: PhD department: - _id: GradSch - _id: KrCh doi: 10.15479/AT-ISTA-19903 doi_confirm: '1' ec_funded: 1 file: - access_level: closed checksum: 794c02f8c82ca59ba6dda3bd7eed871a content_type: application/x-xz creator: vhuebner date_created: 2025-06-25T13:38:07Z date_updated: 2025-06-25T13:38:07Z file_id: '19905' file_name: Thesis Valentin Hübner source.tar.xz file_size: 6192760 relation: source_file - access_level: open_access checksum: ac56063d81c81e40322b6ff5a8c4912e content_type: application/pdf creator: vhuebner date_created: 2025-07-09T13:37:00Z date_updated: 2025-07-09T13:37:00Z file_id: '19976' file_name: Thesis Valentin Hübner.pdf file_size: 4837864 relation: main_file file_date_updated: 2025-07-09T13:37:00Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.15479/AT-ISTA-19903 has_accepted_license: '1' language: - iso: eng license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ month: '06' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: '157' project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: 260C2330-B435-11E9-9278-68D0E5697425 call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '754411' name: ISTplus - Postdoctoral Fellowships - _id: 4029cfc7-b034-11f1-9e55-88ab2ff3b6ee grant_number: COE12 name: Bilateral Artificial Intelligence (Chatterjee) publication_identifier: issn: - 2663-337X publication_status: published publisher: Institute of Science and Technology Austria related_material: record: - id: '19843' relation: part_of_dissertation status: public - id: '15083' relation: part_of_dissertation status: public - id: '19074' relation: part_of_dissertation status: public status: public supervisor: - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X title: Reciprocity and inequality in social dilemmas tmp: image: /images/cc_by_nc.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) short: CC BY-NC (4.0) type: dissertation user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 year: '2025' ... --- DOAJ_listed: '1' OA_place: publisher OA_type: gold _id: '19843' abstract: - lang: eng text: 'Social dilemmas are collective-action problems where individual interests are at odds with group interests. Such dilemmas occur frequently at all scales of human interactions. When dealing with collective-action problems, people often act reciprocally. They adjust their behavior to match the previous behavior of the recipient. The literature distinguishes two kinds of reciprocity. According to direct reciprocity, individuals react to their immediate experiences with the recipient. They are more likely to cooperate if the recipient previously cooperated with them. According to indirect reciprocity, individuals react to the recipient’s general behavior, irrespectively of whether or not they benefited directly. In practice, the two kinds of reciprocity are often intertwined; people typically base their decisions on both direct experiences and indirect observations. Yet only recently have researchers begun to explore how the two kinds of reciprocity interact. So far, this research only addresses a single type of social dilemma, the donation game, where the effects of individual behaviors are independent. Instead, here we allow for all pairwise social dilemmas. By applying novel techniques to generalize the theory of zero-determinant strategies, we establish an important proof of principle: In all social dilemmas, socially optimal outcomes can be sustained as an equilibrium, using either direct or indirect reciprocity, or arbitrary mixtures thereof. These results neither require games to be repeated infinitely often, nor that individual opinions are synchronized. In this way, we considerably generalize the scope of models of reciprocity, and we build further bridges between the literatures on direct and indirect reciprocity.' acknowledgement: 'This work was supported by the European Research Council CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) (to K.C.) and the European Research Council Starting Grant 850529: E-DIRECT (to C.H.).' article_number: pgaf154 article_processing_charge: Yes article_type: original author: - first_name: Valentin full_name: Hübner, Valentin id: 2c8aa207-dc7d-11ea-9b2f-f22972ecd910 last_name: Hübner orcid: 0009-0001-5009-4987 - first_name: Laura full_name: Schmid, Laura id: 38B437DE-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Schmid orcid: 0000-0002-6978-7329 - first_name: Christian full_name: Hilbe, Christian id: 2FDF8F3C-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Hilbe orcid: 0000-0001-5116-955X - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X citation: ama: Hübner V, Schmid L, Hilbe C, Chatterjee K. Stable strategies of direct and indirect reciprocity across all social dilemmas. PNAS Nexus. 2025;4(5). doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf154 apa: Hübner, V., Schmid, L., Hilbe, C., & Chatterjee, K. (2025). Stable strategies of direct and indirect reciprocity across all social dilemmas. PNAS Nexus. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf154 chicago: Hübner, Valentin, Laura Schmid, Christian Hilbe, and Krishnendu Chatterjee. “Stable Strategies of Direct and Indirect Reciprocity across All Social Dilemmas.” PNAS Nexus. Oxford University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf154. ieee: V. Hübner, L. Schmid, C. Hilbe, and K. Chatterjee, “Stable strategies of direct and indirect reciprocity across all social dilemmas,” PNAS Nexus, vol. 4, no. 5. Oxford University Press, 2025. ista: Hübner V, Schmid L, Hilbe C, Chatterjee K. 2025. Stable strategies of direct and indirect reciprocity across all social dilemmas. PNAS Nexus. 4(5), pgaf154. mla: Hübner, Valentin, et al. “Stable Strategies of Direct and Indirect Reciprocity across All Social Dilemmas.” PNAS Nexus, vol. 4, no. 5, pgaf154, Oxford University Press, 2025, doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf154. short: V. Hübner, L. Schmid, C. Hilbe, K. Chatterjee, PNAS Nexus 4 (2025). corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-06-15T22:01:30Z date_published: 2025-05-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T06:58:23Z day: '01' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf154 ec_funded: 1 external_id: pmid: - '40417077' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: efd6648db3fc3ea0cdd7155d667e5f11 content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-06-23T08:09:50Z date_updated: 2025-06-23T08:09:50Z file_id: '19867' file_name: 2025_PNASNexus_Huebner.pdf file_size: 2551195 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-06-23T08:09:50Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf154 has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 4' issue: '5' language: - iso: eng month: '05' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version pmid: 1 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' publication: PNAS Nexus publication_identifier: eissn: - 2752-6542 publication_status: published publisher: Oxford University Press quality_controlled: '1' related_material: record: - id: '19903' relation: dissertation_contains status: public scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Stable strategies of direct and indirect reciprocity across all social dilemmas tmp: image: /images/cc_by_nc.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) short: CC BY-NC (4.0) type: journal_article user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 4 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher OA_type: hybrid PlanS_conform: '1' _id: '19074' abstract: - lang: eng text: 'The public goods game is among the most studied metaphors of cooperation in groups. In this game, individuals can use their endowments to make contributions towards a good that benefits everyone. Each individual, however, is tempted to free-ride on the contributions of others. Herein, we study repeated public goods games among asymmetric players. Previous work has explored to which extent asymmetry allows for full cooperation, such that players contribute their full endowment each round. However, by design that work focusses on equilibria where individuals make the same contribution each round. Instead, here we consider players whose contributions along the equilibrium path can change from one round to the next. We do so for three different models – one without any budget constraints, one with endowment constraints, and one in which individuals can save their current endowment to be used in subsequent rounds. In each case, we explore two key quantities: the welfare and the resource efficiency that can be achieved in equilibrium. Welfare corresponds to the sum of all players’ payoffs. Resource efficiency relates this welfare to the total contributions made by the players. Compared to constant contribution sequences, we find that time-dependent contributions can improve resource efficiency across all three models. Moreover, they can improve the players’ welfare in the model with savings.' acknowledgement: 'This work was supported by the European Research Council CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) (to K.C.) and the European Research Council Starting Grant 850529: E-DIRECT (to C.H.), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement #754411 and the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (under the Investissement d’Avenir programme, ANR-17-EURE-0010), and ARC SRIEAS Grant SR200100005 Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (to M.K.). Open access funding provided by Institute of Science and Technology (IST Austria).' article_processing_charge: Yes (via OA deal) article_type: original author: - first_name: Valentin full_name: Hübner, Valentin id: 2c8aa207-dc7d-11ea-9b2f-f22972ecd910 last_name: Hübner orcid: 0009-0001-5009-4987 - first_name: Christian full_name: Hilbe, Christian id: 2FDF8F3C-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Hilbe orcid: 0000-0001-5116-955X - first_name: Manuel full_name: Staab, Manuel last_name: Staab - first_name: Maria full_name: Kleshnina, Maria id: 4E21749C-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Kleshnina orcid: 0000-0002-5518-8317 - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X citation: ama: Hübner V, Hilbe C, Staab M, Kleshnina M, Chatterjee K. Time-dependent strategies in repeated asymmetric public goods games. Dynamic Games and Applications. 2025;15:1617-1645. doi:10.1007/s13235-025-00627-5 apa: Hübner, V., Hilbe, C., Staab, M., Kleshnina, M., & Chatterjee, K. (2025). Time-dependent strategies in repeated asymmetric public goods games. Dynamic Games and Applications. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13235-025-00627-5 chicago: Hübner, Valentin, Christian Hilbe, Manuel Staab, Maria Kleshnina, and Krishnendu Chatterjee. “Time-Dependent Strategies in Repeated Asymmetric Public Goods Games.” Dynamic Games and Applications. Springer Nature, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13235-025-00627-5. ieee: V. Hübner, C. Hilbe, M. Staab, M. Kleshnina, and K. Chatterjee, “Time-dependent strategies in repeated asymmetric public goods games,” Dynamic Games and Applications, vol. 15. Springer Nature, pp. 1617–1645, 2025. ista: Hübner V, Hilbe C, Staab M, Kleshnina M, Chatterjee K. 2025. Time-dependent strategies in repeated asymmetric public goods games. Dynamic Games and Applications. 15, 1617–1645. mla: Hübner, Valentin, et al. “Time-Dependent Strategies in Repeated Asymmetric Public Goods Games.” Dynamic Games and Applications, vol. 15, Springer Nature, 2025, pp. 1617–45, doi:10.1007/s13235-025-00627-5. short: V. Hübner, C. Hilbe, M. Staab, M. Kleshnina, K. Chatterjee, Dynamic Games and Applications 15 (2025) 1617–1645. corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-02-23T23:01:57Z date_published: 2025-11-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T06:58:23Z day: '01' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1007/s13235-025-00627-5 ec_funded: 1 external_id: isi: - '001415587800001' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: de0a412cbb7d98bf5e6a551c26acbefa content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-12-30T08:01:35Z date_updated: 2025-12-30T08:01:35Z file_id: '20888' file_name: 2025_DynGamesAppl_Huebner.pdf file_size: 1126178 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-12-30T08:01:35Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13235-025-00627-5 has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 15' isi: 1 language: - iso: eng month: '11' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: 1617-1645 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: 260C2330-B435-11E9-9278-68D0E5697425 call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '754411' name: ISTplus - Postdoctoral Fellowships publication: Dynamic Games and Applications publication_identifier: eissn: - 2153-0793 issn: - 2153-0785 publication_status: published publisher: Springer Nature quality_controlled: '1' related_material: record: - id: '19903' relation: dissertation_contains status: public scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Time-dependent strategies in repeated asymmetric public goods games tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: journal_article user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 15 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher _id: '20138' abstract: - lang: eng text: "The evolution shapes the world around us.\r\nNot only in biology, where the fittest individuals spread their genes but also in physics and social dynamics, the evolutionary forces determine the development of a state of matter or public opinions.\r\nMany models describe these dynamics.\r\nThis thesis examines the role of the structure in the models of selection.\r\nThe population structure is represented as a graph or a network, and each vertex is occupied by one individual.\r\nEvery individual has a type and fitness that represents the reproductive potential and depends on the type, occupied vertex, and the arrangement of the neighbors.\r\nThe evolution is modeled in discrete steps; in one step, one individual is replaced by a neighbor selected randomly with the influence of fitness.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe role of the networks is widely examined in the literature.\r\nThe structures that promote the spread of the desired type compared to the structureless case are called amplifiers.\r\nThe existence of amplifiers in various settings is an intensively studied topic, and in some settings, the amplifiers have been identified.\r\nMoreover, there are other important questions about the number of steps until one type spreads over the whole network (fixation time), the computational complexity, and the questions about the robustness of these processes.\r\n\r\n\r\nThis thesis explores the role of structure in evolution from many perspectives.\r\nFirst, it introduces different models and various choices that can be made in the models of evolution.\r\nIt highlights the role of the structure in the real world and how this is reflected in these models.\r\nThen, it describes the previous results and open problems.\r\nSecond, the thesis describes an amplifier for two variants of the Moran process: one with a constant birth rate and the other with a constant death rate.\r\nThis is an important contribution to the robustness of the amplification.\r\nThird, the thesis determines the complexity of spatial games.\r\nThese are processes where the fitness comes from a game, and the strength of selection is high.\r\nIt shows that determining the fate of cooperation in these games is a PSPACE-complete problem.\r\nFourth, the thesis describes the amplifier of cooperation for spatial games.\r\nThis is the first amplifier in this setting.\r\nFifth, the thesis examines the coexistence in the Moran process with environmental heterogeneity.\r\nIn this setting, the fitness depends not only on the type of the individual but also on the occupied vertex.\r\nThe chapter determines the relationship between the interactions of vertices of different types and the coexistence time.\r\nSixth, the thesis examines the social balance on networks and proposes a stochastic dynamic partially aware of the state of the graph, which reaches a balanced position quickly.\r\nFinally, the thesis presents conclusions and outlines the directions for future work.\r\n\r\n\r\n" acknowledgement: "This work was supported by the European Research Council CoG 863818 (ForMSMArt) and Austrian Science Fund 10.55776/COE12.\r\n" alternative_title: - ISTA Thesis article_processing_charge: No author: - first_name: Jakub full_name: Svoboda, Jakub id: 130759D2-D7DD-11E9-87D2-DE0DE6697425 last_name: Svoboda orcid: 0000-0002-1419-3267 citation: ama: Svoboda J. Structural properties of games on graphs. 2025. doi:10.15479/AT-ISTA-20138 apa: Svoboda, J. (2025). Structural properties of games on graphs. Institute of Science and Technology Austria. https://doi.org/10.15479/AT-ISTA-20138 chicago: Svoboda, Jakub. “Structural Properties of Games on Graphs.” Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2025. https://doi.org/10.15479/AT-ISTA-20138. ieee: J. Svoboda, “Structural properties of games on graphs,” Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2025. ista: Svoboda J. 2025. Structural properties of games on graphs. Institute of Science and Technology Austria. mla: Svoboda, Jakub. Structural Properties of Games on Graphs. Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2025, doi:10.15479/AT-ISTA-20138. short: J. Svoboda, Structural Properties of Games on Graphs, Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2025. corr_author: '1' das_tickbox: '1' date_created: 2025-08-05T14:33:59Z date_published: 2025-08-05T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T06:59:33Z day: '05' ddc: - '000' - '519' degree_awarded: PhD department: - _id: GradSch - _id: KrCh doi: 10.15479/AT-ISTA-20138 doi_confirm: '1' ec_funded: 1 file: - access_level: open_access checksum: c6c4df9777f4537940de7ab392ad57e2 content_type: application/pdf creator: jsvoboda date_created: 2025-08-14T09:54:43Z date_updated: 2025-08-14T09:54:43Z file_id: '20177' file_name: 2025_Svoboda_Jakub_Thesis.pdf file_size: 5927291 relation: main_file success: 1 - access_level: closed checksum: 485e9f9822821bc03666d245d80aaa08 content_type: application/zip creator: jsvoboda date_created: 2025-08-14T09:55:20Z date_updated: 2025-08-21T11:48:39Z file_id: '20178' file_name: 2025_Svoboda_Jakub_Thesis.zip file_size: 6731815 relation: source_file file_date_updated: 2025-08-21T11:48:39Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.15479/AT-ISTA-20138 has_accepted_license: '1' language: - iso: eng license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ month: '08' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: '167' project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: 4029cfc7-b034-11f1-9e55-88ab2ff3b6ee grant_number: COE12 name: Bilateral Artificial Intelligence (Chatterjee) publication_identifier: issn: - 2663-337X publication_status: published publisher: Institute of Science and Technology Austria publisher_comment: "Chapter 4 is copyrighted by CC BY-NC-ND\r\n4.0, which prohibits derivatives. Chapter 6 is copyrighted: Copyright (2025) by the American\r\nPhysical Society. For a copy, redistribution, or modification needs to be permitted by the\r\nAmerican Physical Society.\r\n" related_material: record: - id: '12787' relation: part_of_dissertation status: public - id: '12101' relation: part_of_dissertation status: public - id: '12257' relation: part_of_dissertation status: public - id: '15297' relation: part_of_dissertation status: public - id: '18703' relation: part_of_dissertation status: public status: public supervisor: - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X title: Structural properties of games on graphs tmp: image: /images/cc_by_nc_sa.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) short: CC BY-NC-SA (4.0) type: dissertation user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher OA_type: diamond _id: '20299' abstract: - lang: eng text: "Deterministic Markov Decision Processes (DMDPs) are a mathematical framework for decision-making where the outcomes and future possible actions are deterministically determined by the current action taken. DMDPs can be viewed as a finite directed weighted graph, where in each step, the controller chooses an outgoing edge. An objective is a measurable function on runs (or infinite trajectories) of the DMDP, and the value for an objective is the maximal cumulative reward (or weight) that the controller can guarantee. We consider the classical mean-payoff (aka limit-average) objective, which is a basic and fundamental objective.\r\n\r\nHoward's policy iteration algorithm is a popular method for solving DMDPs with mean-payoff objectives. Although Howard's algorithm performs well in practice, as experimental studies suggested, the best known upper bound is exponential and the current known lower bound is as follows: For the input size I, the algorithm requires (math formular) iterations, where (math formular) hides the poly-logarithmic factors, i.e., the current lower bound on iterations is sub-linear with respect to the input size. Our main result is an improved lower bound for this fundamental algorithm where we show that for the input size I, the algorithm requires (math formular) iterations." acknowledgement: "This research was partially supported by the ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) grant and Austrian Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/COE12.\r\n" alternative_title: - PMLR article_processing_charge: No arxiv: 1 author: - first_name: Ali full_name: Asadi, Ali id: 02d96aae-000e-11ec-b801-cadd0a5eefbb last_name: Asadi - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Jakob full_name: De Raaij, Jakob last_name: De Raaij citation: ama: 'Asadi A, Chatterjee K, De Raaij J. Lower bound on Howard policy iteration for deterministic Markov Decision Processes. In: The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence. Vol 286. ML Research Press; 2025:223-232.' apa: 'Asadi, A., Chatterjee, K., & De Raaij, J. (2025). Lower bound on Howard policy iteration for deterministic Markov Decision Processes. In The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 286, pp. 223–232). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: ML Research Press.' chicago: Asadi, Ali, Krishnendu Chatterjee, and Jakob De Raaij. “Lower Bound on Howard Policy Iteration for Deterministic Markov Decision Processes.” In The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, 286:223–32. ML Research Press, 2025. ieee: A. Asadi, K. Chatterjee, and J. De Raaij, “Lower bound on Howard policy iteration for deterministic Markov Decision Processes,” in The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2025, vol. 286, pp. 223–232. ista: 'Asadi A, Chatterjee K, De Raaij J. 2025. Lower bound on Howard policy iteration for deterministic Markov Decision Processes. The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence. UAI: Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, PMLR, vol. 286, 223–232.' mla: Asadi, Ali, et al. “Lower Bound on Howard Policy Iteration for Deterministic Markov Decision Processes.” The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 286, ML Research Press, 2025, pp. 223–32. short: A. Asadi, K. Chatterjee, J. De Raaij, in:, The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, ML Research Press, 2025, pp. 223–232. conference: end_date: 2025-07-25 location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil name: 'UAI: Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence' start_date: 2025-07-21 corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-09-07T22:01:34Z date_published: 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T07:01:05Z day: '01' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh - _id: GradSch ec_funded: 1 external_id: arxiv: - '2506.12254' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: 4180c81bb6ed3b4f5c7a8e48d06520c6 content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-09-09T06:27:59Z date_updated: 2025-09-09T06:27:59Z file_id: '20313' file_name: 2025_UAI_Asadi.pdf file_size: 317097 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-09-09T06:27:59Z has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 286' language: - iso: eng month: '01' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: 223-232 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: 4029cfc7-b034-11f1-9e55-88ab2ff3b6ee grant_number: COE12 name: Bilateral Artificial Intelligence (Chatterjee) publication: The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence publication_identifier: eissn: - 2640-3498 publication_status: published publisher: ML Research Press quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Lower bound on Howard policy iteration for deterministic Markov Decision Processes tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 286 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher OA_type: diamond _id: '20297' abstract: - lang: eng text: "A standard model that arises in several applications in sequential decision-making is partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) where a decision-making agent interacts with an uncertain environment. A basic objective in POMDPs is the reachability objective, where given a target set of states, the goal is to eventually arrive at one of them.\r\n\r\nThe limit-sure problem asks whether reachability can be ensured with probability arbitrarily close to 1. In general, the limit-sure reachability problem for POMDPs is undecidable. However, in many practical cases, the most relevant question is the existence of policies with a small amount of memory. In this work, we study the limit-sure reachability problem for POMDPs with a fixed amount of memory. We establish that the computational complexity of the problem is NP-complete." acknowledgement: This research was partially supported by Austrian Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/COE12, the support of the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) under reference ANR-21-CE40-0020 (CONVERGENCE project), and the ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) grant. alternative_title: - PMLR article_processing_charge: No arxiv: 1 author: - first_name: Ali full_name: Asadi, Ali id: 02d96aae-000e-11ec-b801-cadd0a5eefbb last_name: Asadi - first_name: Krishnendu full_name: Chatterjee, Krishnendu id: 2E5DCA20-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Chatterjee orcid: 0000-0002-4561-241X - first_name: Raimundo J full_name: Saona Urmeneta, Raimundo J id: BD1DF4C4-D767-11E9-B658-BC13E6697425 last_name: Saona Urmeneta orcid: 0000-0001-5103-038X - first_name: Ali full_name: Shafiee, Ali id: 2783031a-7378-11f0-b2d0-f17f1db2ebad last_name: Shafiee citation: ama: 'Asadi A, Chatterjee K, Saona Urmeneta RJ, Shafiee A. Limit-sure reachability for small memory policies in POMDPs is NP-complete. In: The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence. Vol 286. ML Research Press; 2025:238-247.' apa: 'Asadi, A., Chatterjee, K., Saona Urmeneta, R. J., & Shafiee, A. (2025). Limit-sure reachability for small memory policies in POMDPs is NP-complete. In The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 286, pp. 238–247). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: ML Research Press.' chicago: Asadi, Ali, Krishnendu Chatterjee, Raimundo J Saona Urmeneta, and Ali Shafiee. “Limit-Sure Reachability for Small Memory Policies in POMDPs Is NP-Complete.” In The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, 286:238–47. ML Research Press, 2025. ieee: A. Asadi, K. Chatterjee, R. J. Saona Urmeneta, and A. Shafiee, “Limit-sure reachability for small memory policies in POMDPs is NP-complete,” in The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2025, vol. 286, pp. 238–247. ista: 'Asadi A, Chatterjee K, Saona Urmeneta RJ, Shafiee A. 2025. Limit-sure reachability for small memory policies in POMDPs is NP-complete. The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence. UAI: Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, PMLR, vol. 286, 238–247.' mla: Asadi, Ali, et al. “Limit-Sure Reachability for Small Memory Policies in POMDPs Is NP-Complete.” The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 286, ML Research Press, 2025, pp. 238–47. short: A. Asadi, K. Chatterjee, R.J. Saona Urmeneta, A. Shafiee, in:, The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, ML Research Press, 2025, pp. 238–247. conference: end_date: 2025-07-25 location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil name: 'UAI: Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence' start_date: 2025-07-21 corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-09-07T22:01:34Z date_published: 2025-07-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T07:03:02Z day: '01' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: KrCh - _id: GradSch ec_funded: 1 external_id: arxiv: - '2412.00941' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: 1a37ebe7ba73ab6985765bf0d17a0acc content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-09-09T08:19:41Z date_updated: 2025-09-09T08:19:41Z file_id: '20315' file_name: 2025_UAI_AsadiAli.pdf file_size: 307458 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-09-09T08:19:41Z has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 286' language: - iso: eng month: '07' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: 238-247 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: 4029cfc7-b034-11f1-9e55-88ab2ff3b6ee grant_number: COE12 name: Bilateral Artificial Intelligence (Chatterjee) publication: The 41st Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence publication_identifier: eissn: - 2640-3498 publication_status: published publisher: ML Research Press quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Limit-sure reachability for small memory policies in POMDPs is NP-complete tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 286 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: publisher OA_type: hybrid PlanS_conform: '1' _id: '19508' abstract: - lang: eng text: We consider random two-player zero-sum dynamic games with perfect information on a class of infinite directed graphs. Starting from a fixed vertex, the players take turns to move a token along the edges of the graph. Every vertex is assigned a payoff known in advance by both players. Every time the token visits a vertex, Player 2 pays Player 1 the corresponding payoff. We consider a distribution over such games by assigning i.i.d. payoffs to the vertices. On the one hand, for acyclic directed graphs of bounded degree and sub-exponential expansion, we show that, when the duration of the game tends to infinity, the value converges almost surely to a constant at an exponential rate dominated in terms of the expansion. On the other hand, for the infinite d-ary tree (that does not fall into the previous class of graphs), we show convergence at a double-exponential rate. acknowledgement: Open access funding provided by Institute of Science and Technology (IST Austria). This work was supported by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) under references ANR-21-CE40-0020 (CONVERGENCE project) and ANR-20-CE40-0002 (GrHyDy), by Fondecyt grant 1220174, by ANID Chile grant ACT210005, and by the ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) grant. This collaboration was mainly conducted during a 1-year visit of Bruno Ziliotto to the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) at University of Chile in 2023, under the IRL program of CNRS. This work was supported by Fondation CFM pour la Recherche. This paper has also been funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under grant ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d’Avenir program). article_processing_charge: Yes (via OA deal) article_type: original author: - first_name: Luc full_name: Attia, Luc last_name: Attia - first_name: Lyuben full_name: Lichev, Lyuben id: 9aa8388e-d003-11ee-8458-c4c1d7447977 last_name: Lichev - first_name: Dieter full_name: Mitsche, Dieter last_name: Mitsche - first_name: Raimundo J full_name: Saona Urmeneta, Raimundo J id: BD1DF4C4-D767-11E9-B658-BC13E6697425 last_name: Saona Urmeneta orcid: 0000-0001-5103-038X - first_name: Bruno full_name: Ziliotto, Bruno last_name: Ziliotto citation: ama: Attia L, Lichev L, Mitsche D, Saona Urmeneta RJ, Ziliotto B. Random zero-sum dynamic games on infinite directed graphs. Dynamic Games and Applications. 2025;15:1517-1535. doi:10.1007/s13235-025-00636-4 apa: Attia, L., Lichev, L., Mitsche, D., Saona Urmeneta, R. J., & Ziliotto, B. (2025). Random zero-sum dynamic games on infinite directed graphs. Dynamic Games and Applications. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13235-025-00636-4 chicago: Attia, Luc, Lyuben Lichev, Dieter Mitsche, Raimundo J Saona Urmeneta, and Bruno Ziliotto. “Random Zero-Sum Dynamic Games on Infinite Directed Graphs.” Dynamic Games and Applications. Springer Nature, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13235-025-00636-4. ieee: L. Attia, L. Lichev, D. Mitsche, R. J. Saona Urmeneta, and B. Ziliotto, “Random zero-sum dynamic games on infinite directed graphs,” Dynamic Games and Applications, vol. 15. Springer Nature, pp. 1517–1535, 2025. ista: Attia L, Lichev L, Mitsche D, Saona Urmeneta RJ, Ziliotto B. 2025. Random zero-sum dynamic games on infinite directed graphs. Dynamic Games and Applications. 15, 1517–1535. mla: Attia, Luc, et al. “Random Zero-Sum Dynamic Games on Infinite Directed Graphs.” Dynamic Games and Applications, vol. 15, Springer Nature, 2025, pp. 1517–35, doi:10.1007/s13235-025-00636-4. short: L. Attia, L. Lichev, D. Mitsche, R.J. Saona Urmeneta, B. Ziliotto, Dynamic Games and Applications 15 (2025) 1517–1535. corr_author: '1' date_created: 2025-04-06T22:01:32Z date_published: 2025-11-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T07:00:33Z day: '01' ddc: - '000' department: - _id: MaKw - _id: KrCh doi: 10.1007/s13235-025-00636-4 ec_funded: 1 external_id: isi: - '001449708900001' file: - access_level: open_access checksum: b3a1b7eef40c9ac2acf3fef563081694 content_type: application/pdf creator: dernst date_created: 2025-12-30T08:13:04Z date_updated: 2025-12-30T08:13:04Z file_id: '20891' file_name: 2025_DynGamesAppl_Attia.pdf file_size: 570994 relation: main_file success: 1 file_date_updated: 2025-12-30T08:13:04Z fulldoi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13235-025-00636-4 has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 15' isi: 1 language: - iso: eng month: '11' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version page: 1517-1535 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' publication: Dynamic Games and Applications publication_identifier: eissn: - 2153-0793 issn: - 2153-0785 publication_status: published publisher: Springer Nature quality_controlled: '1' related_material: record: - id: '20234' relation: dissertation_contains status: public scopus_import: '1' status: public title: Random zero-sum dynamic games on infinite directed graphs tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: journal_article user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 15 year: '2025' ... --- OA_place: repository OA_type: green _id: '20302' abstract: - lang: eng text: "LocalSGD and SCAFFOLD are widely used methods in distributed stochastic optimization, with numerous applications in machine learning, large-scale data processing, and federated learning. However, rigorously establishing their theoretical advantages over simpler methods, such as minibatch SGD (MbSGD), has proven challenging, as existing analyses often rely on strong assumptions, unrealistic premises, or overly restrictive scenarios.\r\n\r\nIn this work, we revisit the convergence properties of LocalSGD and SCAFFOLD under a variety of existing or weaker conditions, including gradient similarity, Hessian similarity, weak convexity, and Lipschitz continuity of the Hessian. Our analysis shows that (i) LocalSGD achieves faster convergence compared to MbSGD for weakly convex functions without requiring stronger gradient similarity assumptions; (ii) LocalSGD benefits significantly from higher-order similarity and smoothness; and (iii) SCAFFOLD demonstrates faster convergence than MbSGD for a broader class of non-quadratic functions. These theoretical insights provide a clearer understanding of the conditions under which LocalSGD and SCAFFOLD outperform MbSGD." acknowledgement: "The authors thank for the helpful discussions with Eduard Gorbunov, Kumar Kshitij Patel, Anton\r\nRodomanov, and Ali Zindari during the preparation of this work. This work was partially done during the first author’s stays at CISPA and at MBZUAI. The first author also acknowledges ERC CoG 863818 (ForM-SMArt) and Austrian Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/COE12." alternative_title: - PMLR article_processing_charge: No arxiv: 1 author: - first_name: Ruichen full_name: Luo, Ruichen id: b391db08-1ffe-11ee-8b67-d18ddcfb5a14 last_name: Luo - first_name: Sebastian U. full_name: Stich, Sebastian U. last_name: Stich - first_name: Samuel full_name: Horváth, Samuel last_name: Horváth - first_name: Martin full_name: Takáč, Martin last_name: Takáč citation: ama: 'Luo R, Stich SU, Horváth S, Takáč M. Revisiting LocalSGD and SCAFFOLD: Improved rates and missing analysis. In: The 28th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics. Vol 258. ML Research Press; 2025:2539-2547.' apa: 'Luo, R., Stich, S. U., Horváth, S., & Takáč, M. (2025). Revisiting LocalSGD and SCAFFOLD: Improved rates and missing analysis. In The 28th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (Vol. 258, pp. 2539–2547). Mai Khao, Thailand: ML Research Press.' chicago: 'Luo, Ruichen, Sebastian U. Stich, Samuel Horváth, and Martin Takáč. “Revisiting LocalSGD and SCAFFOLD: Improved Rates and Missing Analysis.” In The 28th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 258:2539–47. ML Research Press, 2025.' ieee: 'R. Luo, S. U. Stich, S. Horváth, and M. Takáč, “Revisiting LocalSGD and SCAFFOLD: Improved rates and missing analysis,” in The 28th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, Mai Khao, Thailand, 2025, vol. 258, pp. 2539–2547.' ista: 'Luo R, Stich SU, Horváth S, Takáč M. 2025. Revisiting LocalSGD and SCAFFOLD: Improved rates and missing analysis. The 28th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics. AISTATS: Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, PMLR, vol. 258, 2539–2547.' mla: 'Luo, Ruichen, et al. “Revisiting LocalSGD and SCAFFOLD: Improved Rates and Missing Analysis.” The 28th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, vol. 258, ML Research Press, 2025, pp. 2539–47.' short: R. Luo, S.U. Stich, S. Horváth, M. Takáč, in:, The 28th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, ML Research Press, 2025, pp. 2539–2547. conference: end_date: 2025-05-05 location: Mai Khao, Thailand name: 'AISTATS: Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics' start_date: 2025-05-03 date_created: 2025-09-07T22:01:35Z date_published: 2025-05-01T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2026-09-16T07:01:32Z day: '01' department: - _id: KrCh ec_funded: 1 external_id: arxiv: - '2501.04443' intvolume: ' 258' language: - iso: eng main_file_link: - open_access: '1' url: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2501.04443 month: '05' oa: 1 oa_version: Preprint page: 2539-2547 project: - _id: 0599E47C-7A3F-11EA-A408-12923DDC885E call_identifier: H2020 grant_number: '863818' name: 'Formal Methods for Stochastic Models: Algorithms and Applications' - _id: 4029cfc7-b034-11f1-9e55-88ab2ff3b6ee grant_number: COE12 name: Bilateral Artificial Intelligence (Chatterjee) publication: The 28th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics publication_identifier: eissn: - 2640-3498 publication_status: published publisher: ML Research Press quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: '1' status: public title: 'Revisiting LocalSGD and SCAFFOLD: Improved rates and missing analysis' type: conference user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 258 year: '2025' ...