A new rule for almost-certain termination of probabilistic- and demonic programs

Abstract

Extending our own and others' earlier approaches to reasoning about termination of probabilistic programs, we propose and prove a new rule for termination with probability one, also known as "almost-certain termination". The rule uses both (non-strict) super martingales and guarantees of progress, together, and it seems to cover significant cases that earlier methods do not. In particular, it suffices for termination of the unbounded symmetric random walk in both one- and two dimensions: for the first, we give a proof; for the second, we use a theorem of Foster to argue that a proof exists. Non-determinism (i.e. demonic choice) is supported; but we do currently restrict to discrete distributions.