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Updated: Jul 28, 2025

Experimental Research Examining How People Can Cope with Uncertainty Through Soft Haptic Sensations
Published on: September 16, 2015
Response to comment on "Policy impacts of statistical uncertainty and privacy"
Ryan Steed1, Alessandro Acquisti1, Zhiwei Steven Wu1
1Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
Abstract:
We offer our thanks to the authors for their thoughtful comments. Cui, Gong, Hannig, and Hoffman propose a valuable improvement to our method of estimating lost entitlements due to data error. Because we don't have access to the unknown, "true" number of children in poverty, our paper simulates data error by drawing counterfactual estimates from a normal distribution around the official, published poverty estimates, which we use to calculate lost entitlements relative to the official allocation of funds. But, if we make the more realistic assumption that the published estimates are themselves normally distributed around the "true" number of children in poverty, Cui et al.'s proposed framework allows us to reliably estimate lost entitlements relative to the unknown, ideal allocation of funds-what districts would have received if we knew the "true" number of children in poverty.
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