Topics in Information Theory and Coding (EE5848) : Aug-Dec 2026.

In this topics course we will be covering differential privacy for statistics and machine learning this year!
  • Instructor

    • Myna Vajha

  • Timings and Venue (Tentative)

    • Slot P: Monday: 2.30-4pm, Thursday: 4-5.30pm

    • Segments: 3-6

    • Credits: 2

    • Venue: A221

    • First class on Monday, 31st August, 2.30pm

  • Outline (Tentative)

    • Indentification Attacks

    • Reconstruction Attacks

    • Differential Privacy

      • Randomized Response

      • Laplace Mechanism

      • Exponential Mechanism

      • Composition Theorems and Properties

    • Approximate Differential Privacy

      • Gaussian Mechanism

    • Applications to Statistics

      • Private mean estimation

      • Private Hypothesis Testing

    • Applications to Machine Learning

      • Private Emperical Risk Minimization

      • Private Stochastic Gradient Descent

  • References