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What does "coarsening" actually look like?

  • 1.  What does "coarsening" actually look like?

    Posted 3 hours ago

    We've been experimenting with a new interactive tool to help explain disclosure avoidance methods in federal statistics.

    The Disclosure Avoidance Explorer lets you compare six approaches-from suppression and rounding to differential privacy-and see how each one changes a hypothetical census table. It's intended as an educational tool to help visualize the tradeoffs between privacy protection and data utility.

    Take a look, and let us know what you think. We welcome suggestions for improvements or additional examples.

    Blog:๐Ÿ”— https://federaldataforum.prb.org/blogs/mark-mather/2026/07/15/what-does-coarsening-look-like

    Tool:๐Ÿ”— https://fdf.connectedcommunity.org/blogs/disclosure-avoidance-explorer 



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    Mark Mather
    Associate VP
    PRB
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