preprintJournal of the American Statistical AssociationMay 18, 2026GREEN OA

Edgeworth Accountant: An Analytical Approach to Differential Privacy Composition

University of Pennsylvania · BC Platforms (Finland) · +1 more institution

Indexed inarxivcrossrefdatacite

Abstract

In privacy-preserving data analysis, many procedures and algorithms are structured as compositions of multiple private building blocks. As such, an important question is how to efficiently compute the overall privacy loss under composition. This paper introduces the Edgeworth Accountant, an analytical approach to composing differential privacy guarantees for private algorithms. Leveraging the $f$-differential privacy framework, the Edgeworth Accountant accurately tracks privacy loss under composition, enabling a closed-form expression of privacy guarantees through privacy-loss log-likelihood ratios (PLLRs). As implied by its name, this method applies the Edgeworth expansion to estimate and define the…

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7
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98%
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Authors

6

Topics & keywords

Keywords
  • Differential privacy
  • Composition (language)
  • Computer science
  • Simple (philosophy)
  • Analytics
  • Differential (mechanical device)
  • Upper and lower bounds
  • Noise (video)
UN Sustainable Development Goals
  • Peace, Justice and strong institutions
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