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Differentially Private Estimation via Statistical Depth

Ryan Cumings-Menon

arXiv 26 Jul 2022 · Statistics — Machine Learning

arXiv:2207.12602 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Constructing a differentially private (DP) estimator requires deriving the maximum influence of an observation, which can be difficult in the absence of exogenous bounds on the input data or the estimator, especially in high dimensional settings. This paper shows that standard notions of statistical depth, i.e., halfspace depth and regression depth, are particularly advantageous in this regard, both in the sense that the maximum influence of a single observation is easy to analyze and that this value is typically low. This is used to motivate new approximate DP location and regression estimators using the maximizers of these two notions of statistical depth. A more computationally efficient variant of the approximate DP regression estimator is also provided. Also, to avoid requiring that users specify a priori bounds on the estimates and/or the observations, variants of these DP mechanisms are described that satisfy random differential privacy (RDP), which is a relaxation of differential privacy provided by Hall, Wasserman, and Rinaldo (2013). We also provide simulations of the two DP regression methods proposed here. The proposed estimators appear to perform favorably relative to the existing DP regression methods we consider in these simulations when either the sample size is at least 100-200 or the privacy-loss budget is sufficiently high.

Citation extraction

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Nissim, K., Raskhodnikova, S., and Smith, A (2007) Smooth sensitivity and sampling in private data analysis1.000234100%
2Rousseeuw, P. J. and Hubert, M (1999) Regression depth1.00093100%
3Dwork, C., McSherry, F., Nissim, K., and Smith, A (2006) Calibrating noise to sensitivity in private data analysis1.00073100%
4Chen, Y., Machanavajjhala, A., Reiter, J. P., and Barrientos, A. F (2016) Differentially private regression diagnostics1.00063100%
5Hall, R., Wasserman, L., and Rinaldo, A (2013) Random differential privacy0.92843100%
6Donoho, D. L. and Gasko, M (1992) Breakdown properties of location estimates based on halfspace depth and projected outlyingness0.87492100%
7Mizera, I (2002) On depth and deep points: a calculus0.87452100%
8Tukey, J. W (1975) Mathematics and the picturing of data0.81142100%
9Van Aelst, S., Rousseeuw, P. J., Hubert, M., and Struyf, A (2002) The deepest regression method0.73732100%
10Karwa, V. and Vadhan, S (2018) Finite sample differentially private confidence intervals0.69361100%

Showing the top 10 of 59 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Differentially Private Two-Stage Gradient Descent for Instrumental Variable Regression0.40511