English

Synthetic Data -- what, why and how?

Machine Learning 2022-05-09 v1

Abstract

This explainer document aims to provide an overview of the current state of the rapidly expanding work on synthetic data technologies, with a particular focus on privacy. The article is intended for a non-technical audience, though some formal definitions have been given to provide clarity to specialists. This article is intended to enable the reader to quickly become familiar with the notion of synthetic data, as well as understand some of the subtle intricacies that come with it. We do believe that synthetic data is a very useful tool, and our hope is that this report highlights that, while drawing attention to nuances that can easily be overlooked in its deployment.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2205.03257,
  title  = {Synthetic Data -- what, why and how?},
  author = {James Jordon and Lukasz Szpruch and Florimond Houssiau and Mirko Bottarelli and Giovanni Cherubin and Carsten Maple and Samuel N. Cohen and Adrian Weller},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.03257},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Commissioned by the Royal Society. 57 pages 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-24T11:09:25.532Z