Edge differentially private estimation in the $β$-model via jittering and method of moments
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A standing challenge in data privacy is the trade-off between the level of privacy and the efficiency of statistical inference. Here we conduct an in-depth study of this trade-off for parameter estimation in the $β$-model (Chatterjee, Diaconis and Sly, 2011) for edge differentially private network data released via jittering (Karwa, Krivitsky and Slavković, 2017). Unlike most previous approaches based on maximum likelihood estimation for this network model, we proceed via method-of-moments. This choice facilitates our exploration of a substantially broader range of privacy levels - corresponding to stricter privacy - than has been to date. Over this new range we discover our proposed estimator for the parameters exhibits an interesting phase transition, with both its convergence rate and asymptotic variance following one of three different regimes of behavior depending on the level of privacy. Because identification of the operable regime is difficult if not impossible in practice, we devise a novel adaptive bootstrap procedure to construct uniform inference across different phases. In fact, leveraging this bootstrap we are able to provide for simultaneous inference of all parameters in the $β$-model (i.e., equal to the number of nodes), which, to our best knowledge, is the first result of its kind. Numerical experiments confirm the competitive and reliable finite sample performance of the proposed inference methods, next to a comparable maximum likelihood method, as well as significant advantages in terms of computational speed and memory.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.037 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".