On Differentially Private U Statistics

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Chaudhuri, Kamalika, Loh, Po-Ling, Pandey, Shourya, Sarkar, Purnamrita
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Chaudhuri, Kamalika
Loh, Po-Ling
Pandey, Shourya
Sarkar, Purnamrita
author_facet Chaudhuri, Kamalika
Loh, Po-Ling
Pandey, Shourya
Sarkar, Purnamrita
contents We consider the problem of privately estimating a parameter $\mathbb{E}[h(X_1,\dots,X_k)]$, where $X_1$, $X_2$, $\dots$, $X_k$ are i.i.d. data from some distribution and $h$ is a permutation-invariant function. Without privacy constraints, standard estimators are U-statistics, which commonly arise in a wide range of problems, including nonparametric signed rank tests, symmetry testing, uniformity testing, and subgraph counts in random networks, and can be shown to be minimum variance unbiased estimators under mild conditions. Despite the recent outpouring of interest in private mean estimation, privatizing U-statistics has received little attention. While existing private mean estimation algorithms can be applied to obtain confidence intervals, we show that they can lead to suboptimal private error, e.g., constant-factor inflation in the leading term, or even $Θ(1/n)$ rather than $O(1/n^2)$ in degenerate settings. To remedy this, we propose a new thresholding-based approach using \emph{local Hájek projections} to reweight different subsets of the data. This leads to nearly optimal private error for non-degenerate U-statistics and a strong indication of near-optimality for degenerate U-statistics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_04945
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On Differentially Private U Statistics
Chaudhuri, Kamalika
Loh, Po-Ling
Pandey, Shourya
Sarkar, Purnamrita
Statistics Theory
Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
We consider the problem of privately estimating a parameter $\mathbb{E}[h(X_1,\dots,X_k)]$, where $X_1$, $X_2$, $\dots$, $X_k$ are i.i.d. data from some distribution and $h$ is a permutation-invariant function. Without privacy constraints, standard estimators are U-statistics, which commonly arise in a wide range of problems, including nonparametric signed rank tests, symmetry testing, uniformity testing, and subgraph counts in random networks, and can be shown to be minimum variance unbiased estimators under mild conditions. Despite the recent outpouring of interest in private mean estimation, privatizing U-statistics has received little attention. While existing private mean estimation algorithms can be applied to obtain confidence intervals, we show that they can lead to suboptimal private error, e.g., constant-factor inflation in the leading term, or even $Θ(1/n)$ rather than $O(1/n^2)$ in degenerate settings. To remedy this, we propose a new thresholding-based approach using \emph{local Hájek projections} to reweight different subsets of the data. This leads to nearly optimal private error for non-degenerate U-statistics and a strong indication of near-optimality for degenerate U-statistics.
title On Differentially Private U Statistics
topic Statistics Theory
Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.04945