Question

What is the purpose of differential privacy?

1) To remove the direct identifiers that can be used to identify individuals.
2) To ensure the data is completely confidential and cannot be read by unauthorized parties.
3) To enable parties to share private data without revealing individuals represented in the data.
4) To only allow certain parties to access certain portions of the data.

Answer 1

The purpose of differential privacy is to enable parties to share private data without revealing individuals represented in the data. By adding random noise to the data, the privacy of individuals is protected while still allowing useful insights to be derived from the data.

Step-by-step explanation:

The purpose of differential privacy is to enable parties to share private data without revealing individuals represented in the data. It is not specifically focused on removing direct identifiers or ensuring complete data confidentiality. Instead, differential privacy aims to strike a balance between privacy and data utility by adding random noise to the data.

By adding noise to the data, the privacy of individuals is protected because it becomes difficult to determine the exact contribution of any individual to the dataset. This prevents the re-identification of individuals even if the dataset is shared or released to unauthorized parties. At the same time, the added noise should be minimal enough so as not to significantly affect the overall statistical results and insights derived from the data.

For example, let's say a company wants to analyze customer behavior without revealing individual details. They could use differential privacy techniques to add random noise to customer data while still gaining valuable insights about trends and patterns.