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We provide optimal lower bounds for two well-known parameter estimation (also known as statistical estimation) tasks in high dimensions with approximate differential privacy. First, we prove that for any $\alpha \le O(1)$, estimating the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-01-05 Shyam Narayanan

Let $X$ be a random variable with unknown mean and finite variance. We present a new estimator of the mean of $X$ that is robust with respect to the possible presence of outliers in the sample, provides tight sub-Gaussian deviation…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-01-03 Stanislav Minsker , Mohamed Ndaoud

In this work, we revisit the problem of estimating the mean and covariance of an unknown $d$-dimensional Gaussian distribution in the presence of an $\varepsilon$-fraction of adversarial outliers. The pioneering work of [DKK+16] gave a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-10-25 Pravesh K. Kothari , Peter Manohar , Brian Hu Zhang

We present an estimator of the covariance matrix $\Sigma$ of random $d$-dimensional vector from an i.i.d. sample of size $n$. Our sole assumption is that this vector satisfies a bounded $L^p-L^2$ moment assumption over its one-dimensional…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-03-27 Roberto I. Oliveira , Zoraida F. Rico

We study the fundamental task of estimating the median of an underlying distribution from a finite number of samples, under pure differential privacy constraints. We focus on distributions satisfying the minimal assumption that they have a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-11-13 Christos Tzamos , Emmanouil-Vasileios Vlatakis-Gkaragkounis , Ilias Zadik

We prove lower bounds on the number of samples needed to privately estimate the covariance matrix of a Gaussian distribution. Our bounds match existing upper bounds in the widest known setting of parameters. Our analysis relies on the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-04-30 Victor S. Portella , Nick Harvey

We propose an estimator for the mean of a random vector in $\mathbb{R}^d$ that can be computed in time $O(n^4+n^2d)$ for $n$ i.i.d.~samples and that has error bounds matching the sub-Gaussian case. The only assumptions we make about the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-02-07 Yeshwanth Cherapanamjeri , Nicolas Flammarion , Peter L. Bartlett

We study the problem of estimating the mean of a random vector $X$ given a sample of $N$ independent, identically distributed points. We introduce a new estimator that achieves a purely sub-Gaussian performance under the only condition that…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2017-02-03 Gábor Lugosi , Shahar Mendelson

We present novel, computationally efficient, and differentially private algorithms for two fundamental high-dimensional learning problems: learning a multivariate Gaussian and learning a product distribution over the Boolean hypercube in…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-05-31 Gautam Kamath , Jerry Li , Vikrant Singhal , Jonathan Ullman

This paper addresses the following question: given a sample of i.i.d. random variables with finite variance, can one construct an estimator of the unknown mean that performs nearly as well as if the data were normally distributed? One of…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-02-06 Stanislav Minsker

We present the first $\varepsilon$-differentially private, computationally efficient algorithm that estimates the means of product distributions over $\{0,1\}^d$ accurately in total-variation distance, whilst attaining the optimal sample…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-01-29 Vikrant Singhal

We study efficient algorithms for linear regression and covariance estimation in the absence of Gaussian assumptions on the underlying distributions of samples, making assumptions instead about only finitely-many moments. We focus on how…

We study mean estimation for Gaussian distributions under \textit{personalized differential privacy} (PDP), where each record has its own privacy budget. PDP is commonly considered in two variants: \textit{bounded} and \textit{unbounded}…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-01-23 Wei Dong , Li Ge

Assume that $X_{1}, \ldots, X_{N}$ is an $\varepsilon$-contaminated sample of $N$ independent Gaussian vectors in $\mathbb{R}^d$ with mean $\mu$ and covariance $\Sigma$. In the strong $\varepsilon$-contamination model we assume that the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-01-24 Arshak Minasyan , Nikita Zhivotovskiy

We consider discrete nonparametric priors which induce Gibbs-type exchangeable random partitions and investigate their posterior behavior in detail. In particular, we deduce conditional distributions and the corresponding Bayesian…

Probability · Mathematics 2008-08-22 Antonio Lijoi , Igor Prünster , Stephen G. Walker

In this paper we study the problem of estimating the unknown mean $\theta$ of a unit variance Gaussian distribution in a locally differentially private (LDP) way. In the high-privacy regime ($\epsilon\le 1$), we identify an optimal privacy…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-03-06 Nikita P. Kalinin , Lukas Steinberger

For general non-Gaussian distributions, the covariance and precision matrices do not encode the independence structure of the variables, as they do for the multivariate Gaussian. This paper builds on previous work to show that for a class…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-18 Ujas Shah , Manuel Lladser , Rebecca Morrison

We propose PACE-GGM, a data-adaptive differentially private method for covariance estimation that concentrates its privacy budget on the most informative entries of the empirical covariance matrix, rather than perturbing all entries. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Cecilia Ferrando , Miguel Fuentes , Brett Mullins , Cameron Musco , Daniel Sheldon

We develop a univariate, differentially private mean estimator, called the private modified winsorized mean, designed to be used as the aggregator in subsample-and-aggregate. We demonstrate, via real data analysis, that common…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-05-09 Kelly Ramsay , Dylan Spicker

We give the first polynomial time and sample $(\epsilon, \delta)$-differentially private (DP) algorithm to estimate the mean, covariance and higher moments in the presence of a constant fraction of adversarial outliers. Our algorithm…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-12-08 Pravesh K. Kothari , Pasin Manurangsi , Ameya Velingker