Bias and Variance of Post-processing in Differential Privacy

Keyu Zhu, Pascal Van Hentenryck, Ferdinando Fioretto

Research output: Chapter in Book/Entry/PoemConference contribution

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Post-processing immunity is a fundamental property of differential privacy: it enables the application of arbitrary data-independent transformations to the results of differentially private outputs without affecting their privacy guarantees. When query outputs must satisfy domain constraints, post-processing can be used to project the privacy-preserving outputs onto the feasible region. Moreover, when the feasible region is convex, a widely adopted class of post-processing steps is also guaranteed to improve accuracy. Post-processing has been applied successfully in many applications including census data-release, energy systems, and mobility. However, its effects on the noise distribution is poorly understood: It is often argued that post-processing may introduce bias and increase variance. This paper takes a first step towards understanding the properties of post-processing. It considers the release of census data and examines, both theoretically and empirically, the behavior of a widely adopted class of post-processing functions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021
PublisherAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Pages11177-11184
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781713835974
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021
Event35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: Feb 2 2021Feb 9 2021

Publication series

Name35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021
Volume12B

Conference

Conference35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period2/2/212/9/21

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence

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