Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
1–10 of 48 posts
Re: Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
#2They use real data to create artificial data. So, real data is still more useful.
Re: Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
#3They use real data to create artificial data. So, real data is still more useful.
The idea is to sidestep the need to access private information in order for researchers to do their work. So in this case, the artificial data is more useful, since the real data is inaccessible.
Re: Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
#4Is this akin at all to random sampling with replacement ie bootstrapping?
Re: Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
#5Is this akin at all to random sampling with replacement ie bootstrapping?
No, because that would take full rows of the feature matrix (thereby corresponding to the full information of one individual).
The idea here is to “generate” rows corresponding to plausible artificial individuals.
That way you can give a third party artificial data to build an ML model without compromising (too much) the privacy of the real individual in the initial data.
Re: Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
#6Is this akin at all to random sampling with replacement ie bootstrapping?
It is easy to confuse it for such, but it is not bootstrapping. It is a form of multi-dimensional random variable generation, where the generated dimensions preserve same correlations/relationships as those in the original dataset.
Re: Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
#7On a parallel note, search for "thresholdout". It's another (genius, I think) way to "stretch" how far your data goes in training a model. I won't do a better job trying to explain it than those who already have, so I won't try—here's a nice link explaining it instead: http://andyljones.tumblr.com/post/127547085623/holdout-reuse
Re: Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
#8I wonder how secure it is against identifying individuals. With over-fitting, you can producing the training data as output. Hopefully they have a robust way to prevent that, or any kind of reverse engineering of the output to somehow work out the original data.
Re: Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
#9Does someone have a link to the preprint / arxiv? The link in the story is a 404 (I presume that the paper just hasn't been posted yet or something?)
Re: Artificial data give the same results as real data without compromising privacy
#10Seems like only helpful for testing methods that can't capture any correlations the original method didn't.