  In this work we introduce a novel approach, based on sampling, for finding
assignments that are likely to be solutions to stochastic constraint
satisfaction problems and constraint optimisation problems. Our approach
reduces the size of the original problem being analysed; by solving this
reduced problem, with a given confidence probability, we obtain assignments
that satisfy the chance constraints in the original model within prescribed
error tolerance thresholds. To achieve this, we blend concepts from stochastic
constraint programming and statistics. We discuss both exact and approximate
variants of our method. The framework we introduce can be immediately employed
in concert with existing approaches for solving stochastic constraint programs.
A thorough computational study on a number of stochastic combinatorial
optimisation problems demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach.
