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FUNCTIONAL PEARLS: Probabilistic functional programming in Haskell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2005

MARTIN ERWIG  and
STEVE KOLLMANSBERGER
MARTIN ERWIG
Affiliation:
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA (e-mail: erwig@eecs.oregonstate.edu, kollmast@eecs.oregonstate.edu)
STEVE KOLLMANSBERGER
Affiliation:
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA (e-mail: erwig@eecs.oregonstate.edu, kollmast@eecs.oregonstate.edu)
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At the heart of functional programming rests the principle of referential transparency, which in particular means that a function f applied to a value x always yields one and the same value y=f(x). This principle seems to be violated when contemplating the use of functions to describe probabilistic events, such as rolling a die: It is not clear at all what exactly the outcome will be, and neither is it guaranteed that the same value will be produced repeatedly. However, these two seemingly incompatible notions can be reconciled if probabilistic values are encapsulated in a data type.

Type
Functional Pearls
Information
Journal of Functional Programming , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 21 - 34
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press
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