HiTaS: A Heuristic Approach to Cell Suppression in Hierarchical Tables

This paper describes a heuristic approach to find suppression patterns in tables that exhibit a hierarchical structure in at least one of the explanatory variables. The hierarchical structure implies that there exist (many) sub-totals, i.e., that (many) sub-tables can be constructed. These sub-tables should be protected in such a way that they cannot be used to undo the protection of any of the other tables. The proposed heuristic approach has a top-down structure: when a table of high level (sub-)totals is suppressed, its interior turns into the marginals of possibly several tables on a lower level. These lower level tables are then protected while keeping the marginals fixed.