Results of The Hacker Survey

Re:Results of The Hacker Survey by skolor on Thursday August 27, 2009 @04:05PM (#789919)

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if your Age, Salary and hours are unique in the table. In fact, I'm relative certain that any two of the numerical fields (family excluded, since so many people had 0) would uniquely identify you, or at least limit it to on a handful of individuals. The concept of "Anonymous data" is largely non-existant; if you know who you're looking for in a table of anonymous data, you can usually find them.

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Re:Results of The Hacker Survey by bockris on Thursday August 27, 2009 @05:13PM (#790068)

Hmm. I whipped up a quick python script to test this theory.

  Age,Hours Wrkd,Income was unique ~89% of the time
  Age,Hours Wrkd, Yrs in industy,Income was unique 97% of the time
  Age,Education,Hours Wrkd,Income was unique 94% of the time
  Age,Education,Hours Wrkd,Yrs in Industry,Income was unique 98% of the time

Here it is if anyone wants to play with it. http://paste.pocoo.org/show/136649/

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