English

Notes on Sampled Gaussian Mechanism

Machine Learning 2024-09-10 v1 Machine Learning

Abstract

In these notes, we prove a recent conjecture posed in the paper by R\"ais\"a, O. et al. [Subsampling is not Magic: Why Large Batch Sizes Work for Differentially Private Stochastic Optimization (2024)]. Theorem 6.2 of the paper asserts that for the Sampled Gaussian Mechanism - a composition of subsampling and additive Gaussian noise, the effective noise level, σeff=σ(q)q\sigma_{\text{eff}} = \frac{\sigma(q)}{q}, decreases as a function of the subsampling rate qq. Consequently, larger subsampling rates are preferred for better privacy-utility trade-offs. Our notes provide a rigorous proof of Conjecture 6.3, which was left unresolved in the original paper, thereby completing the proof of Theorem 6.2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.04636,
  title  = {Notes on Sampled Gaussian Mechanism},
  author = {Nikita P. Kalinin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.04636},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:37:03.505Z