Adjusting Queries to Statistical Procedures Under Differential Privacy (2110.05895v1)

Abstract: We consider a dataset $S$ held by an agency, and a vector query of interest, $f(S) \in \mathbb{R}^k$, to be posed by an analyst, which contains the information required for certain planned statistical inference. The agency releases the requested vector query with noise that guarantees a given level of Differential Privacy -- DP$(\varepsilon,\delta)$ -- using the well-known Gaussian mechanism. The analyst can choose to pose the vector query $f(S)$ or to adjust it by a suitable transformation that can make the agency's response more informative. For any given level of privacy DP$(\varepsilon,\delta)$ decided by the agency, we study natural situations where the analyst can achieve better statistical inference by adjusting the query with a suitable simple explicit transformation.