Decoding Digital Preferences: A Collaborative Approach to Solving the Mysteries of A/B Testing
As a digital detective, your mission is to decipher the preferences of your website visitors. Your primary tool? A/B testing – a method used in online controlled experiments where two versions of a webpage (version A and version B) are presented to different subsets of users under the same conditions. It’s akin to a magnifying glass, enabling you to scrutinize the minute details of user interactions across two versions of a webpage to discern their preferences. However, this case isn’t as straightforward as it seems. A recent article by Nicholas Larsen et al. in The American Statistician reveals the hidden challenges of A/B testing that can affect the results of online experiments. If these challenges aren’t tackled correctly, they can lead to misleading conclusions, affecting decisions in both online businesses and academic research.
Differential Privacy Unveiled – the Case of the 2020 Census for Redistricting and Data Privacy
Census statistics play a pivotal role in making public policy decisions such as redrawing legislative districts and allocating federal funds as well as supporting social science research. However, given the risk of revealing individual information, many statistical agencies are considering disclosure control methods based on differential privacy, by adding noise to tabulated data and subsequently conducting postprocessing. The U.S. Census Bureau in particular has implemented a Disclosure Avoidance System (DAS) based on differential privacy technology to protect individual Census responses. This system adds random noise, guided by a privacy loss budget (denoted by ϵ), to Census tabulations, aiming to prevent the disclosure of personal information as mandated by law. The privacy loss budget value ϵ determines the level of privacy protection, with higher ϵ values allowing more noise. While the adoption of differential privacy has been controversial, this approach is crucial for maintaining data confidentiality. Other countries and organizations are also considering this technology as well.