Suppose we would like to know all answers to a set of statistical queries C on a data set up to small error, but we can only access the data itself using statistical queries. A trivial solution is to exhaustively ask all queries in C. Can we do any better? + We show that the number of statistical queries necessary and sufficient for this task is---up to polynomial factors---equal to the agnostic learning complexity of C in Kearns' statistical query (SQ) model. This gives a complete answer to the question when running time is not a concern. + We then show that the problem can be solved efficiently (allowing arbitrary error on a small fraction of queries) whenever the answers to C can be described by a submodular function. This includes many natural concept classes, such as graph cuts and Boolean disjunctions and conjunctions. While interesting from a learning theoretic point of view, our main applications are in privacy-preserving data analysis: Here, our second result leads to the first algorithm that efficiently releases differentially private answers to of all Boolean conjunctions with 1 average error. This presents significant progress on a key open problem in privacy-preserving data analysis. Our first result on the other hand gives unconditional lower bounds on any differentially private algorithm that admits a (potentially non-privacy-preserving) implementation using only statistical queries. Not only our algorithms, but also most known private algorithms can be implemented using only statistical queries, and hence are constrained by these lower bounds. Our result therefore isolates the complexity of agnostic learning in the SQ-model as a new barrier in the design of differentially private algorithms.
@cite_0 introduced the and models of privacy and gave information theoretic characterizations for which classes of functions could be in these models: they showed that information theoretically, the class of functions that can be learned in the centralized model of privacy is equivalent to the class of functions that can be agnostically PAC learned, and the class of functions that can be learned in the local privacy model is equivalent to the class of functions that can be learned in the SQ model of Kearns @cite_9 .
@cite_0 @cite_9
2245160765 1995897489
Learning problems form an important category of computational tasks that generalizes many of the computations researchers apply to large real-life data sets. We ask, What concept classes can be learned privately, namely, by an algorithm whose output does not depend too heavily on any one input or specific training example? More precisely, we investigate learning algorithms that satisfy differential privacy, a notion that provides strong confidentiality guarantees in contexts where aggregate information is released about a database containing sensitive information about individuals. Our goal is a broad understanding of the resources required for private learning in terms of samples, computation time, and interaction. We demonstrate that, ignoring computational constraints, it is possible to privately agnostically learn any concept class using a sample size approximately logarithmic in the cardinality of the concept class. Therefore, almost anything learnable is learnable privately: specifically, if a concept class is learnable by a (nonprivate) algorithm with polynomial sample complexity and output size, then it can be learned privately using a polynomial number of samples. We also present a computationally efficient private probabilistically approximately correct learner for the class of parity functions. This result dispels the similarity between learning with noise and private learning (both must be robust to small changes in inputs), since parity is thought to be very hard to learn given random classification noise. Local (or randomized response) algorithms are a practical class of private algorithms that have received extensive investigation. We provide a precise characterization of local private learning algorithms. We show that a concept class is learnable by a local algorithm if and only if it is learnable in the statistical query (SQ) model. Therefore, for local private learning algorithms, the similarity to learning with noise is stronger: local learning is equivalent to SQ learning, and SQ algorithms include most known noise-tolerant learning algorithms. Finally, we present a separation between the power of interactive and noninteractive local learning algorithms. Because of the equivalence to SQ learning, this result also separates adaptive and nonadaptive SQ learning. In this paper, we study the problem of learning in the presence of classification noise in the probabilistic learning model of Valiant and its variants. In order to identify the class of “robust” learning algorithms in the most general way, we formalize a new but related model of learning from statistical queries . Intuitively, in this model a learning algorithm is forbidden to examine individual examples of the unknown target function, but is given acess to an oracle providing estimates of probabilities over the sample space of random examples. One of our main results shows that any class of functions learnable from statistical queries is in fact learnable with classification noise in Valiant's model, with a noise rate approaching the information-theoretic barrier of 1 2. We then demonstrate the generality of the statistical query model, showing that practically every class learnable in Valiant's model and its variants can also be learned in the new model (and thus can be learned in the presence of noise). A notable exception to this statement is the class of parity functions, which we prove is not learnable from statistical queries, and for which no noise-tolerant algorithm is known.