A Live, Multiple-Representation Probabilistic Programming Environment For Novices

We present a live, multiple-representation novice environment for probabilistic programming based on the Infer. NET language. When compared to a text-only editor in a controlled experiment on 16 participants, our system showed a significant reduction in keystrokes during introductory probabilistic programming exercises, and subsequently, a significant improvement in program description and debugging tasks as measured by task time, keystrokes and deletions.