Differentially-Private Clustering of Easy Instances

Edith Cohen, Haim Kaplan, Yishay Mansour, Uri Stemmer, Eliad Tsfadia*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

Clustering is a fundamental problem in data analysis. In differentially private clustering, the goal is to identify k cluster centers without disclosing information on individual data points. Despite significant research progress, the problem had so far resisted practical solutions. In this work we aim at providing simple implementable differentially private clustering algorithms that provide utility when the data is”easy, ” e.g., when there exists a significant separation between the clusters. We propose a framework that allows us to apply non-private clustering algorithms to the easy instances and privately combine the results. We are able to get improved sample complexity bounds in some cases of Gaussian mixtures and k-means. We complement our theoretical analysis with an empirical evaluation on synthetic data.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2021
PublisherML Research Press
Pages2049-2059
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9781713845065
StatePublished - 2021
Event38th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 18 Jul 202124 Jul 2021

Publication series

NameProceedings of Machine Learning Research
Volume139
ISSN (Electronic)2640-3498

Conference

Conference38th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period18/07/2124/07/21

Funding

FundersFunder number
European Union’sHorizon 2020 research and innovation program
Yandex Initiative for Machine Learning
Blavatnik Family Foundation
European Commission882396, 993/17
European Commission
Israel Science Foundation1595-19
Tel Aviv University1871/19

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