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The point of differential privacy is to allow for aggregate analysis, without destroying the privacy of outliers. Researchers deal with noise all the time, so i

by cyphar 10y ago

The point of differential privacy is to allow for aggregate analysis, without destroying the privacy of outliers. Researchers deal with noise all the time, so is it so odd that a field of researchers believe that adding enough noise to data released with studies will allow for conclusive analysis without ruining privacy for individuals?

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Create 10y ago
Outliers are the reason databases exist. Any "average" is simply readily apparent, therefore irrelevant for serious in depth analysis. Adding noise and fuzzing has a long history in statistics since the '70s [1], and while it does work on large numbers, it almost always messes up the details ie. the error bars. C.D. DP is essentially a cheap ripoff of the ideas implemented in ARGUS[2]. [1] 1977 Dalenius, see Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate movement and earlier: http://tpscongress.indiana.edu/impact-of-congress/gallery/first-census.html http://tpscongress.indiana.edu/impact-of-congress/gallery/fi... [2] http://neon.vb.cbs.nl/casc/ http://neon.vb.cbs.nl/casc/
- Create 10y ago
  downvoter: care to elaborate on the usefulness of a database with almost identical entries with MEANingless values?
  - cyphar 10y ago
    Outliers are not the only useful thing in a set of data. If you remove outliers from most data sets, it doesn't suddenly become "almost identical" -- unless your outlier rejection system is "is it equal to 1".
- cyphar 10y ago
  > Outliers are the reason databases exist. Disagree. Data is why databases exist. > Any "average" is simply readily apparent, therefore irrelevant for serious in depth analysis. I said "aggregate", not "average". There are many kinds of aggregate analysis useful (in Astrophysics, you can take many different samples from different stars and use the aggregate to compute commonalities in the sample that you would've detect with a single measurement). There is more to aggregate analysis than averaging data. As for the rest of your points, I'm not a statistician so I can't comment. Also, I didn't downvote you (HN rules).
  - Create 10y ago
    sorry -- please substitute "average" (original was also in quotes) to category or factor, and you still have the bin I am talking about. You can put any label on it you like such as "commonality", as long as you remove details, ie. other bins. But as you say: your "aggregate analysis" NEEDS "many different samples from different stars". Commonality is the result of your analysis based on different samples. But since they are common, you can go and sample and have the result without doing mass surveillance on every star. ps: I am fully aware of photo stacking, but also note, that stars are not humans, see context of privacy. Please look at argus or sdcMicroGUI from CRAN to get a feeling for data utility vs. reidentification risk.
    - cyphar 10y ago
      > But since they are common, you can go and sample and have the result without doing mass surveillance on every star. "Mass surveilance" reduces noise and lets you get more data in a shorter period of time (telescopes have large fields of view, but they can't make time pass faster). Stacking (which is what the technique is called in Astrophysics) is very useful in this case. Not to mention that you can also do individual analysis as well. Actually, most interesting of all is that you can do this type of analysis on objects like neutron stars that we can't observe directly because they're too faint. Because noise in telescopes can be modelled as a Poisson process, stacking actually increases S/N in a way you can't do without making much bigger telescopes. PS. I'm not a statistician, so I can only speak to what I know. But my whole point is that researchers do know how to deal with noisy data, regardless of whether or not that noise is man-made or not. Interestingly enough, I found out recently that the NASA pipeline actually breaks certain data sets they have released (which have papers written about them) so man-made noise is a problem regardless of whether or not it's intentional.
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aub3bhat 10y ago
As someone with access to data on 50 million patients and having studied aggregation of medical data for last 5 years I can assure you that its not easy as it sounds. The amount of noise that "theoretically guarantees" privacy protection in terms of epsilon renders any reasonable analysis impossible. E.g. How about CDC telling you that there are 0 - 2000 cases of Ebola in Massachusetts. There are theoretical guarantees provided by Differential privacy and then there are actual requirements of conducting public health or biostatistical reaseach with certain evidence value. The gap between the noise added by the former and tolerated by the latter is enormous.
- skiningham 10y ago
  0-2000 in a population of 3.6 million does not seem unreasonable to me.
  - aub3bhat 10y ago
    Sure, but you are neither a doctor nor an infectious medicine specialist. Its trained doctors and researchers who get to decide quality of medical evidence. There is a reason why we have detailed set of protocols and levels used for assessment of evidence. http://www.cebm.net/oxford-centre-evidence-based-medicine-levels-evidence-march-2009/ http://www.cebm.net/oxford-centre-evidence-based-medicine-le...

by cyphar 10y ago

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Create 10y ago

Outliers are the reason databases exist. Any "average" is simply readily apparent, therefore irrelevant for serious in depth analysis. Adding noise and fuzzing has a long history in statistics since the '70s [1], and while it does work on large numbers, it almost always messes up the details ie. the error bars. C.D. DP is essentially a cheap ripoff of the ideas implemented in ARGUS[2]. [1] 1977 Dalenius, see Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate movement and earlier: http://tpscongress.indiana.edu/impact-of-congress/gallery/first-census.html http://tpscongress.indiana.edu/impact-of-congress/gallery/fi... [2] http://neon.vb.cbs.nl/casc/ http://neon.vb.cbs.nl/casc/

Create 10y ago
downvoter: care to elaborate on the usefulness of a database with almost identical entries with MEANingless values?
- cyphar 10y ago
  Outliers are not the only useful thing in a set of data. If you remove outliers from most data sets, it doesn't suddenly become "almost identical" -- unless your outlier rejection system is "is it equal to 1".
cyphar 10y ago
> Outliers are the reason databases exist. Disagree. Data is why databases exist. > Any "average" is simply readily apparent, therefore irrelevant for serious in depth analysis. I said "aggregate", not "average". There are many kinds of aggregate analysis useful (in Astrophysics, you can take many different samples from different stars and use the aggregate to compute commonalities in the sample that you would've detect with a single measurement). There is more to aggregate analysis than averaging data. As for the rest of your points, I'm not a statistician so I can't comment. Also, I didn't downvote you (HN rules).
- Create 10y ago
  sorry -- please substitute "average" (original was also in quotes) to category or factor, and you still have the bin I am talking about. You can put any label on it you like such as "commonality", as long as you remove details, ie. other bins. But as you say: your "aggregate analysis" NEEDS "many different samples from different stars". Commonality is the result of your analysis based on different samples. But since they are common, you can go and sample and have the result without doing mass surveillance on every star. ps: I am fully aware of photo stacking, but also note, that stars are not humans, see context of privacy. Please look at argus or sdcMicroGUI from CRAN to get a feeling for data utility vs. reidentification risk.
  - cyphar 10y ago
    > But since they are common, you can go and sample and have the result without doing mass surveillance on every star. "Mass surveilance" reduces noise and lets you get more data in a shorter period of time (telescopes have large fields of view, but they can't make time pass faster). Stacking (which is what the technique is called in Astrophysics) is very useful in this case. Not to mention that you can also do individual analysis as well. Actually, most interesting of all is that you can do this type of analysis on objects like neutron stars that we can't observe directly because they're too faint. Because noise in telescopes can be modelled as a Poisson process, stacking actually increases S/N in a way you can't do without making much bigger telescopes. PS. I'm not a statistician, so I can only speak to what I know. But my whole point is that researchers do know how to deal with noisy data, regardless of whether or not that noise is man-made or not. Interestingly enough, I found out recently that the NASA pipeline actually breaks certain data sets they have released (which have papers written about them) so man-made noise is a problem regardless of whether or not it's intentional.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

aub3bhat 10y ago

As someone with access to data on 50 million patients and having studied aggregation of medical data for last 5 years I can assure you that its not easy as it sounds. The amount of noise that "theoretically guarantees" privacy protection in terms of epsilon renders any reasonable analysis impossible. E.g. How about CDC telling you that there are 0 - 2000 cases of Ebola in Massachusetts. There are theoretical guarantees provided by Differential privacy and then there are actual requirements of conducting public health or biostatistical reaseach with certain evidence value. The gap between the noise added by the former and tolerated by the latter is enormous.

skiningham 10y ago
0-2000 in a population of 3.6 million does not seem unreasonable to me.
- aub3bhat 10y ago
  Sure, but you are neither a doctor nor an infectious medicine specialist. Its trained doctors and researchers who get to decide quality of medical evidence. There is a reason why we have detailed set of protocols and levels used for assessment of evidence. http://www.cebm.net/oxford-centre-evidence-based-medicine-levels-evidence-march-2009/ http://www.cebm.net/oxford-centre-evidence-based-medicine-le...