Events

Math and Democracy Seminar: Distrust in Noisy Numbers: Epistemic Disconnects Surrounding the Use of Differential Privacy in the 2020 U.S. Census

Speaker: Jayshree Sarathy

Location: On-Line

Date: Monday, November 21, 2022

For decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has used disclosure avoidance techniques in order to protect the confidentiality of individuals represented in census data. Yet, the Census Bureau’s modernization of its disclosure avoidance procedures for its 2020 Census triggered a controversy that is still underway. In this talk, I argue that the move to differential privacy exposed epistemic disconnects around what we identify as a “statistical imaginary,” destabilizing a network of practitioners that upholds the legitimacy of census data. I end by raising questions about how we can—and must—re-imagine our statistical infrastructures going forward.