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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2022.5

On Robustness for the Skolem and Positivity Problems

Authors: S. Akshay, Hugo Bazille, Blaise Genest, and Mihir Vahanwala

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 219, 39th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2022)

Abstract

The Skolem problem is a long-standing open problem in linear dynamical systems: can a linear recurrence sequence (LRS) ever reach 0 from a given initial configuration? Similarly, the positivity problem asks whether the LRS stays positive from an initial configuration. Deciding Skolem (or positivity) has been open for half a century: The best known decidability results are for LRS with special properties (e.g., low order recurrences). On the other hand, these problems are much easier for "uninitialized" variants, where the initial configuration is not fixed but can vary arbitrarily: checking if there is an initial configuration from which the LRS stays positive can be decided by polynomial time algorithms (Tiwari in 2004, Braverman in 2006). In this paper, we consider problems that lie between the initialized and uninitialized variant. More precisely, we ask if 0 (resp. negative numbers) can be avoided from every initial configuration in a neighborhood of a given initial configuration. This can be considered as a robust variant of the Skolem (resp. positivity) problem. We show that these problems lie at the frontier of decidability: if the neighborhood is given as part of the input, then robust Skolem and robust positivity are Diophantine-hard, i.e., solving either would entail major breakthrough in Diophantine approximations, as happens for (non-robust) positivity. Interestingly, this is the first Diophantine-hardness result on a variant of the Skolem problem, to the best of our knowledge. On the other hand, if one asks whether such a neighborhood exists, then the problems turn out to be decidable in their full generality, with PSPACE complexity. Our analysis is based on the set of initial configurations such that positivity holds, which leads to new insights into these difficult problems, and interesting geometrical interpretations.

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S. Akshay, Hugo Bazille, Blaise Genest, and Mihir Vahanwala. On Robustness for the Skolem and Positivity Problems. In 39th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 219, pp. 5:1-5:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{akshay_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2022.5,
  author =	{Akshay, S. and Bazille, Hugo and Genest, Blaise and Vahanwala, Mihir},
  title =	{{On Robustness for the Skolem and Positivity Problems}},
  booktitle =	{39th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2022)},
  pages =	{5:1--5:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-222-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{219},
  editor =	{Berenbrink, Petra and Monmege, Benjamin},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2022.5},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-158156},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2022.5},
  annote =	{Keywords: Skolem problem, verification, dynamical systems, robustness}
}

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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2019.29

Classification Among Hidden Markov Models

Authors: S. Akshay, Hugo Bazille, Eric Fabre, and Blaise Genest

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 150, 39th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2019)

Abstract

An important task in AI is one of classifying an observation as belonging to one class among several (e.g. image classification). We revisit this problem in a verification context: given k partially observable systems modeled as Hidden Markov Models (also called labeled Markov chains), and an execution of one of them, can we eventually classify which system performed this execution, just by looking at its observations? Interestingly, this problem generalizes several problems in verification and control, such as fault diagnosis and opacity. Also, classification has strong connections with different notions of distances between stochastic models. In this paper, we study a general and practical notion of classifiers, namely limit-sure classifiers, which allow misclassification, i.e. errors in classification, as long as the probability of misclassification tends to 0 as the length of the observation grows. To study the complexity of several notions of classification, we develop techniques based on a simple but powerful notion of stationary distributions for HMMs. We prove that one cannot classify among HMMs iff there is a finite separating word from their stationary distributions. This provides a direct proof that classifiability can be checked in PTIME, as an alternative to existing proofs using separating events (i.e. sets of infinite separating words) for the total variation distance. Our approach also allows us to introduce and tackle new notions of classifiability which are applicable in a security context.

Cite as

S. Akshay, Hugo Bazille, Eric Fabre, and Blaise Genest. Classification Among Hidden Markov Models. In 39th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 150, pp. 29:1-29:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)

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@InProceedings{akshay_et_al:LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2019.29,
  author =	{Akshay, S. and Bazille, Hugo and Fabre, Eric and Genest, Blaise},
  title =	{{Classification Among Hidden Markov Models}},
  booktitle =	{39th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2019)},
  pages =	{29:1--29:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-131-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{150},
  editor =	{Chattopadhyay, Arkadev and Gastin, Paul},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2019.29},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-115917},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2019.29},
  annote =	{Keywords: verification: probabilistic systems, partially observable systems}
}

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Documents authored by Bazille, Hugo

On Robustness for the Skolem and Positivity Problems

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Classification Among Hidden Markov Models

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