It is very interesting to note that the sixtieth birthday of an esteemed professor is celebrated by

colleagues, collaborators and students with collective dedication of latest research articles,
and thus appreciating various dimensions of his academic in uence and inspiring leadership.
Their public recognition literally speaks volumes, as the group intends to publish three parts of
such high calibre material, and we consider the very rst one here.

There are seventeen articles in this volume, with most of the content centered around
probabilistic programming. Di erent authors have used the occasion to relate their papers to
the contributions of Joost-Pieter Katoen, in whose honor the collection is presented to us, and
occasionally, we nd anecdotes and pleasant memories of their interactions with him.

Variables in a probabilistic program can take sample values from a probability distribution,
which can then be conditioned using observe statements. Such programs have application in
areas such as computer vision, cryptography, biological models etc. Experts in the respective
domains can use probabilistic programs to express sampling methods and conditions on the
behavior, and the compiler will then help them infer the expected value, most likely value or
explicit probability distribution based on the provided description.

There are a broad range of subjects under probabilistic programming considered here. A
technique which supports a prediction of change in entropy is presented in the article on
quantifying information leaks. In the next paper which also relates to privacy and quantitative
information ow, we nd symbolic methods and other measures like Kullback-Leibler
divergence described. Program slicing, with the goal of identifying program fragments that can
be removed without a ecting its observable behavior is the topic of another article.

One paper presents a framework called POLAR for automated analysis of classical and
probabilistic loops using algebraic recurrences. A uni ed framework for the quantitative
analysis which encompasses termination, temporal properties etc. is the subject matter of
another paper. Longest paper in this entire volume demonstrates a generalized least xed
point characterization of expected rewards in Markov decision processes.

Unlike boolean conditions, smoother versions which interpret those as the mean of a sigmoidal
distribution results in a category referred to as neural programs, which are presented in an
article along with an interesting application in parallel parking. Deductive proof system based
on forward reasoning through symbolic execution, is presented in the paper on veri cation of
properties speci ed in probabilistic dynamic logic. Termination in a classical sense checks for
the absence of in nite evaluation, but AST (almost sure termination) which allows such
sequences with probability of 0, is of interest in probabilistic setting, and this is covered by
another paper in the context of term rewriting.

Some of the articles in this collection are outliers from this central theme of probabilistic
programming and have covered other topics. First paper here proposes static compositional
inter-procedural analysis for temporal properties parametrized over several program variables
and their values. Next paper surveys techniques for program termination in various program
models ranging from deterministic, non-deterministic and probabilistic programs. Third paper
provides re ned bounds for the computational complexity of leftist heaps, with results showing
improvement in the case of weight-biased heaps, and also introduces randomized leftist heaps
with suggested open problems for further research.

Starting with a gentle introduction to qubits and Hilbert spaces, the article on quantum
computing takes the readers through ongoing work on developing a software stack starting
from a high level programming language to the methods of actual mapping to quantum circuits,
while describing various challenges involved, like intermediate measurements that become
necessary to handle conditionals that a ect control ow.
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In the theory section, the paper on graph similarity provides an overview of di erent metrics
under an operational view that is algorithmic in nature, and a declarative view rooted in logic
and semantics, along with a brief discussion on their complexity. Next paper starts with a
description of nested application conditions, which have the same expressive power as rst
order logics, and goes on to contribute new span based conditions and study those in
comparison with the earlier known arrow based conditions. Last paper of the section provides
a comprehensive view of the symbolic automata theoretic approach to LTL and its extensions.

Overall, the content of this volume is deeply technical, with adequate coverage of required
background in the various articles, which can be read out of sequence. Each of the authors
explored the state of the art for the unique problem they chose while maintaining similarity of
presentation style and suggesting open problems where appropriate. Thus, a very valuable
reference for the software veri cation researchers.
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