Results 1 - 10
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57
Distance makes the types grow stronger: A calculus for differential privacy
- In ICFP
, 2010
"... We want assurances that sensitive information will not be disclosed when aggregate data derived from a database is published. Differential privacy offers a strong statistical guarantee that the effect of the presence of any individual in a database will be negligible, even when an adversary has auxi ..."
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Cited by 54 (4 self)
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We want assurances that sensitive information will not be disclosed when aggregate data derived from a database is published. Differential privacy offers a strong statistical guarantee that the effect of the presence of any individual in a database will be negligible, even when an adversary has auxiliary knowledge. Much of the prior work in this area consists of proving algorithms to be differentially private one at a time; we propose to streamline this process with a functional language whose type system automatically guarantees differential privacy, allowing the programmer to write complex privacy-safe query programs in a flexible and compositional way. The key novelty is the way our type system captures function sensitivity, a measure of how much a function can magnify the distance between similar inputs: well-typed programs not only can’t go wrong, they can’t go too far on nearby inputs. Moreover, by introducing a monad for random computations, we can show that the established definition of differential privacy falls out naturally as a special case of this soundness principle. We develop examples including known differentially private algorithms, privacy-aware variants of standard functional programming idioms, and compositionality principles for differential privacy.
From Information to Knowledge: Harvesting Entities and Relationships from Web Sources
"... There are major trends to advance the functionality of search engines to a more expressive semantic level. This is enabled by the advent of knowledge-sharing communities such as Wikipedia and the progress in automatically extracting entities and relationships from semistructured as well as natural-l ..."
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Cited by 26 (7 self)
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There are major trends to advance the functionality of search engines to a more expressive semantic level. This is enabled by the advent of knowledge-sharing communities such as Wikipedia and the progress in automatically extracting entities and relationships from semistructured as well as natural-language Web sources. Recent endeavors of this kind include DBpedia, EntityCube, KnowItAll, ReadTheWeb, and our own YAGO-NAGA project (and others). The goal is to automatically construct and maintain a comprehensive knowledge base of facts about named entities, their semantic classes, and their mutual relations as well as temporal contexts, with high precision and high recall. This tutorial discusses state-ofthe-art methods, research opportunities, and open challenges along this avenue of knowledge harvesting.
Aggregate Queries for Discrete and Continuous Probabilistic XML
, 2010
"... Sources of data uncertainty and imprecision are numerous. A way to handle this uncertainty is to associate probabilistic annotations to data. Many such probabilistic database models have been proposed, both in the relational and in the semi-structured setting. The latter is particularly well adapted ..."
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Cited by 21 (18 self)
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Sources of data uncertainty and imprecision are numerous. A way to handle this uncertainty is to associate probabilistic annotations to data. Many such probabilistic database models have been proposed, both in the relational and in the semi-structured setting. The latter is particularly well adapted to the management of uncertain data coming from a variety of automatic processes. An important problem, in the context of probabilistic XML databases, is that of answering aggregate queries (count, sum, avg, etc.), which has received limited attention so far. In a model unifying the various (discrete) semi-structured probabilistic models studied up to now, we present algorithms to compute the distribution of the aggregation values (exploiting some regularity properties of the aggregate functions) and probabilistic moments (especially, expectation and variance) of this distribution. We also prove the intractability of some of these problems and investigate approximation techniques. We finally extend the discrete model to a continuous one, in order to take into account continuous data values, such as measurements from sensor networks, and present algorithms to compute distribution functions and moments for various classes of continuous distributions of data values.
CoBayes: Bayesian knowledge corroboration with assessors of unknown areas of expertise
- In WSDM
, 2011
"... Our work aims at building probabilistic tools for construct-ing and maintaining large-scale knowledge bases containing entity-relationship-entity triples (statements) extracted from the Web. In order to mitigate the uncertainty inherent in information extraction and integration we propose leveraging ..."
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Cited by 18 (2 self)
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Our work aims at building probabilistic tools for construct-ing and maintaining large-scale knowledge bases containing entity-relationship-entity triples (statements) extracted from the Web. In order to mitigate the uncertainty inherent in information extraction and integration we propose leveraging the “wisdom of the crowds ” by aggregating truth assessments that users provide about statements. The suggested method, CoBayes, operates on a collection of statements, a set of deduction rules (e.g. transitivity), a set of users, and a set of truth assessments of users about statements. We propose a joint probabilistic model of the truth values of statements and the expertise of users for assessing statements. The truth values of statements are interconnected through derivations based on the deduction rules. The correctness of a user’s assessment for a given statement is modeled by linear mappings from user descriptions and statement descriptions into a common latent knowledge space where the inner product between user and statement vectors determines the probability that the user assessment for that statement will be correct. Bayesian inference in this complex graphical model is performed using mixed variational and expectation propagation message passing. We demonstrate the viability of CoBayes in comparison to other approaches, on real-world datasets and user feedback collected from Amazon
On the Optimal Approximation of Queries Using Tractable Propositional Languages
"... This paper investigates the problem of approximating conjunctive queries without self-joins on probabilistic databases by lower and upper bounds that can be computed more efficiently. We study this problem via an indirection: Given a propositional formula Φ, find formulas in a more restricted langua ..."
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Cited by 18 (5 self)
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This paper investigates the problem of approximating conjunctive queries without self-joins on probabilistic databases by lower and upper bounds that can be computed more efficiently. We study this problem via an indirection: Given a propositional formula Φ, find formulas in a more restricted language that are greatest lower bound and least upper bound, respectively, ofΦ. We studyboundsin the languages of read-once formulas, where every variable occurs at most once, and of read-once formulas in disjunctive normal form. We show equivalences of syntactic and model-theoretic characterisations of optimal bounds for unate formulas, and present algorithms that can enumerate them with polynomial delay. Such bounds can be computed by queries expressed using first-order queries extended with transitive closure and a special choice construct. Besides probabilistic databases, theseresults can also benefit the problem of approximate query evaluation in relational databases, since the bounds expressed by queries can be computed in polynomial combined complexity. Categories andSubject Descriptors H.2.4 [Database Management]: Systems—Query Processing
Nearest-Neighbor Searching Under Uncertainty
, 2012
"... Nearest-neighbor queries, which ask for returning the nearest neighbor of a query point in a set of points, are important and widely studied in many fields because of a wide range of applications. In many of these applications, such as sensor databases, location based services, face recognition, and ..."
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Cited by 17 (7 self)
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Nearest-neighbor queries, which ask for returning the nearest neighbor of a query point in a set of points, are important and widely studied in many fields because of a wide range of applications. In many of these applications, such as sensor databases, location based services, face recognition, and mobile data, the location of data is imprecise. We therefore study nearest neighbor queries in a probabilistic framework in which the location of each input point and/or query point is specified as a probability density function and the goal is to return the point that minimizes the expected distance, which we refer to as the expected nearest neighbor (ENN). We present methods for computing an exact ENN or an ε-approximate ENN, for a given error parameter 0 < ε < 1, under different distance functions. These methods build an index of near-linear size and answer ENN queries in polylogarithmic or sublinear time, depending on the underlying function. As far as we know, these are the first nontrivial methods for answering exact or ε-approximate ENN queries with provable performance guarantees.
Measure Transformer Semantics for Bayesian Machine Learning
"... Abstract. The Bayesian approach to machine learning amounts to inferring posterior distributions of random variables from a probabilistic model of how the variables are related (that is, a prior distribution) and a set of observations of variables. There is a trend in machine learning towards expres ..."
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Cited by 16 (4 self)
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Abstract. The Bayesian approach to machine learning amounts to inferring posterior distributions of random variables from a probabilistic model of how the variables are related (that is, a prior distribution) and a set of observations of variables. There is a trend in machine learning towards expressing Bayesian models as probabilistic programs. As a foundation for this kind of programming, we propose a core functional calculus with primitives for sampling prior distributions and observing variables. We define combinators for measure transformers, based on theorems in measure theory, and use these to give a rigorous semantics to our core calculus. The original features of our semantics include its support for discrete, continuous, and hybrid measures, and, in particular, for observations of zero-probability events. We compile our core language to a small imperative language that has a straightforward semantics via factor graphs, data structures that enable many efficient inference algorithms. We use an existing inference engine for efficient approximate inference of posterior marginal distributions, treating thousands of observations per second for large instances of realistic models. 1
Linear Dependent Types for Differential Privacy
"... Differential privacy offers a way to answer queries about sensitive information while providing strong, provable privacy guarantees, ensuring that the presence or absence of a single individual in the database has a negligible statistical effect on the query’s result. Proving that a given query has ..."
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Cited by 16 (7 self)
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Differential privacy offers a way to answer queries about sensitive information while providing strong, provable privacy guarantees, ensuring that the presence or absence of a single individual in the database has a negligible statistical effect on the query’s result. Proving that a given query has this property involves establishing a bound on the query’s sensitivity—how much its result can change when a single record is added or removed. A variety of tools have been developed for certifying that a given query is differentially private. In one approach, Reed and Pierce [34] proposed a functional programming language, Fuzz, for writing differentially private queries. Fuzz uses linear types to track sensitivity and a probability monad to express randomized computation; it guarantees that any program with a certain type is differentially private. Fuzz can successfully verify many useful queries. However, it fails when the sensitivity analysis depends on values that are not known statically. We present DFuzz, an extension of Fuzz with a combination of linear indexed types and lightweight dependent types. This combination allows a richer sensitivity analysis that is able to certify a larger class of queries as differentially private, including ones whose sensitivity depends on runtime information. As in Fuzz, the differential privacy guarantee follows directly from the soundness theorem of the type system. We demonstrate the enhanced expressivity of DFuzz by certifying differential privacy for a broad class of iterative algorithms that could not be typed previously. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.3.2 [Programming Languages]: Language Classifications—Specialized application languages;
Probabilistic XML: Models and complexity
, 2011
"... Abstract. Uncertainty in data naturally arises in various applications, such as data integration and Web information extraction. Probabilistic XML is one of the concepts that have been proposed to model and manage various kinds of uncertain data. In essence, a probabilistic XML document is a compact ..."
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Cited by 15 (10 self)
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Abstract. Uncertainty in data naturally arises in various applications, such as data integration and Web information extraction. Probabilistic XML is one of the concepts that have been proposed to model and manage various kinds of uncertain data. In essence, a probabilistic XML document is a compact representation of a probability distribution over ordinary XML documents. Various models of probabilistic XML provide different languages, with various degrees of expressiveness, for such compact representations. Beyond representation, probabilistic XML systems are expected to support data management in a way that properly reflects the uncertainty. For instance, query evaluation entails probabilistic inference, and update operations need to properly change the entire probability space. Efficiently and effectively accomplishing data-management tasks in that manner is a major technical challenge. This chapter reviews the literature on probabilistic XML. Specifically, this chapter discusses the probabilistic XML models that have been proposed, and the complexity of query evaluation therein. Also discussed are other data-management tasks like updates and compression, as well as systemic and implementation aspects. 1
A Call to Arms: Revisiting Database Design
"... Good database design is crucial to obtain a sound, consistent database, and — in turn — good database design methodologies are the best way to achieve the right design. These methodologies are taught ..."
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Cited by 11 (2 self)
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Good database design is crucial to obtain a sound, consistent database, and — in turn — good database design methodologies are the best way to achieve the right design. These methodologies are taught
