An official website of the United States government
This paper discusses how two classes of approximate computation algorithms can be adapted, in a modular fashion, to achieve exact statistical inference from differentially private data products. Considered are approximate Bayesian computation for Bayesian inference, and Monte Carlo Expectation-Maximization for likelihood inference. Up to Monte Carlo error, inference from these algorithms is exact with respect to the joint specification of both the analyst's original data model, and the curator's differential privacy mechanism. Highlighted is a duality between approximate computation on exact data, and exact computation on approximate data, which can be leveraged by a well-designed computational procedure for statistical inference.
more »
« less
Principled Statistical Inference in Data Science
We discuss the challenges of principled statistical inference in modern data science. Conditionality principles are argued as key to achieving valid statistical inference, in particular when this is performed after selecting a model from sample data itself.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1712940
- PAR ID:
- 10063516
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Statistical Data Science
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 21-36
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Property inference attacks reveal statistical properties about a training set but are difficult to distinguish from the primary purposes of statistical machine learning, which is to produce models that capture statistical properties about a distribution. Motivated by Yeom et al.’s membership inference framework, we propose a formal and generic definition of property inference attacks. The proposed notion describes attacks that can distinguish between possible training distributions, extending beyond previous property inference attacks that infer the ratio of a particular type of data in the training data set. In this paper, we show how our definition captures previous property inference attacks as well as a new attack that reveals the average degree of nodes of a training graph and report on experiments giving insight into the potential risks of property inference attacks.more » « less
-
Property inference attacks reveal statistical properties about a training set but are difficult to distinguish from the primary purposes of statistical machine learning, which is to produce models that capture statistical properties about a distribution. Motivated by Yeom et al.’s membership inference framework, we propose a formal and generic definition of property inference attacks. The proposed notion describes attacks that can distinguish between possible training distributions, extending beyond previous property inference attacks that infer the ratio of a particular type of data in the training data set. In this paper, we show how our definition captures previous property inference attacks as well as a new attack that reveals the average degree of nodes of a training graph and report on experiments giving insight into the potential risks of property inference attacks.more » « less
-
Abstract While fiducial inference was widely considered a big blunder by R.A. Fisher, the goal he initially set—‘inferring the uncertainty of model parameters on the basis of observations’—has been continually pursued by many statisticians. To this end, we develop a new statistical inference method called extended Fiducial inference (EFI). The new method achieves the goal of fiducial inference by leveraging advanced statistical computing techniques while remaining scalable for big data. Extended Fiducial inference involves jointly imputing random errors realized in observations using stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo and estimating the inverse function using a sparse deep neural network (DNN). The consistency of the sparse DNN estimator ensures that the uncertainty embedded in observations is properly propagated to model parameters through the estimated inverse function, thereby validating downstream statistical inference. Compared to frequentist and Bayesian methods, EFI offers significant advantages in parameter estimation and hypothesis testing. Specifically, EFI provides higher fidelity in parameter estimation, especially when outliers are present in the observations; and eliminates the need for theoretical reference distributions in hypothesis testing, thereby automating the statistical inference process. Extended Fiducial inference also provides an innovative framework for semisupervised learning.more » « less
-
Abstract Fusion learning methods, developed for the purpose of analyzing datasets from many different sources, have become a popular research topic in recent years. Individualized inference approaches through fusion learning extend fusion learning approaches to individualized inference problems over a heterogeneous population, where similar individuals are fused together to enhance the inference over the target individual. Both classical fusion learning and individualized inference approaches through fusion learning are established based on weighted aggregation of individual information, but the weight used in the latter is localized to thetargetindividual. This article provides a review on two individualized inference methods through fusion learning,iFusion andiGroup, that are developed under different asymptotic settings. Both procedures guarantee optimal asymptotic theoretical performance and computational scalability. This article is categorized under:Statistical Learning and Exploratory Methods of the Data Sciences > Manifold LearningStatistical Learning and Exploratory Methods of the Data Sciences > Modeling MethodsStatistical and Graphical Methods of Data Analysis > Nonparametric MethodsData: Types and Structure > Massive Datamore » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1142/9781786345400_0002
