An important census product may soon use synthetic data
Advocates say it protects privacy; critics say it will impede research
THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY (ACS), which is sent to around 1% of America’s population every year, is one of the most widely consulted scientific resources in the world. Researchers use its data, cited in more than 12,000 research papers annually, to explore relationships between education, health, income, demographics and geography. Yet the Census Bureau, which administers the ACS, may soon swap actual data for synthetic responses generated by a statistical model, which critics say will be useless for research.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Background noise”
United States June 26th 2021
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