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:π https://federaldataforum.prb.org/blogs/mark-mather/2026/07/15/what-does-coarsening-look-like
Tool:π https://fdf.connectedcommunity.org/blogs/disclosure-avoidance-explorer
This is excellent. Thank you for sharing, Mark!
Mark:
Intuitive, simple, and seemingly has all that one would need to do comparisons or research into coarsening. I liked it. My only suggestion is a note on the screen at the beginning that "a scale setting of xxx% for best viewing" or "Scroll down for more". With my eyesight, I keep my scale at 175% and thus most of the 'page' is out of sight below the bottom of the monitor screen. I try to scroll down when I am looking at pages but don't always remember. At first look, I didn't see the comparisons or the material below and didn't think to look. Eventually I get there, but a reminder at the top/introduction would have helped. Not a big issue.
Overall, excellent IMHO.
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