Detecting Flaky Tests in Probabilistic and Machine Learning Applications
Probabilistic programming systems and machine learning frameworks like Pyro, PyMC3, TensorFlow, and PyTorch provide scalable and efficient primitives for inference and training. However, such operations are non-deterministic. Hence, it is challenging for developers to write tests for applications that depend on such frameworks, often resulting in flaky tests. In this paper, we conduct the first extensive study of flaky tests in this domain. In particular, we study the projects that depend on four frameworks: Pyro, PyMC3, TensorFlow-Probability, and PyTorch. We identify 75 bug reports/commits that deal with flaky tests, and we categorize the common causes and fixes for them. This study provides developers with useful insights on dealing with flaky tests in this domain. We develop a technique, FLASH, to systematically detect flaky tests due to assertions passing and failing in different runs on the same code. These assertions fail due to differences in the sequence of random numbers in different runs of the same test. FLASH exposes such failures, and our evaluation on 20 projects results in 11 new flaky tests that we report to developers; developers accepted fixes for 5 flaky tests, and the rest are pending review.
Tue 21 JulDisplayed time zone: Tijuana, Baja California change
10:50 - 11:50 | MACHINE LEARNING IITechnical Papers at Zoom Chair(s): Baishakhi Ray Columbia University, New York Public Live Stream/Recording. Registered participants should join via the Zoom link distributed in Slack. | ||
10:50 20mTalk | Detecting and Understanding Real-World Differential Performance Bugs in Machine Learning Libraries Technical Papers Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
11:10 20mTalk | Higher Income, Larger Loan? Monotonicity Testing of Machine Learning Models Technical Papers DOI Media Attached | ||
11:30 20mTalk | Detecting Flaky Tests in Probabilistic and Machine Learning Applications Technical Papers Saikat Dutta University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, August Shi The University of Texas at Austin, Rutvik Choudhary , Zhekun Zhang , Aryaman Jain , Sasa Misailovic University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign DOI Media Attached |