Sample data · no sign-up
An alternative to suppression: rather than hide small groups, differential privacy adds calibrated random noise to each count so no individual's presence can be inferred, while totals stay useful. Lower ε = stronger privacy = more noise.
Privacy budget (ε)
1.0
smaller = more private
Noise scale
1.0
Laplace b = 1 ÷ ε
Mean abs. error
±0.7
across 3 groups
True vs. differentially private counts by customer class
customers per group
Laplace mechanism, ε-differential privacy.
Dwork, McSherry, Nissim & Smith (2006); Dwork & Roth (2014); US Census Bureau 2020 DAS.