Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Gentle, Abigail
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Gentle, Abigail
author_facet Gentle, Abigail
contents Local differential privacy represents the gold standard for preserving the privacy of data before it leaves the device, and distribution estimation under this model has been well studied. Recently, protocols built upon balanced incomplete block designs were shown to achieve optimal error for this problem. However, it remained unknown whether other constructions could also be optimal. We resolve this question by proving that any protocol achieving optimal error must correspond to some balanced incomplete block design. This result, combined with prior work, completely characterises the set of optimal protocols for this problem. As a consequence, the protocols that achieve optimal error and optimal communication are only those based on symmetrical balanced incomplete block designs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_05110
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation
Gentle, Abigail
Information Theory
Cryptography and Security
Data Structures and Algorithms
Local differential privacy represents the gold standard for preserving the privacy of data before it leaves the device, and distribution estimation under this model has been well studied. Recently, protocols built upon balanced incomplete block designs were shown to achieve optimal error for this problem. However, it remained unknown whether other constructions could also be optimal. We resolve this question by proving that any protocol achieving optimal error must correspond to some balanced incomplete block design. This result, combined with prior work, completely characterises the set of optimal protocols for this problem. As a consequence, the protocols that achieve optimal error and optimal communication are only those based on symmetrical balanced incomplete block designs.
title Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation
topic Information Theory
Cryptography and Security
Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110