metasyn

Synthetic data is a promising tool for improving the accessibility of datasets which are too sensitive to be shared publicly. To this end, we introduce metasyn, a Python package for generating synthetic data from tabular datasets. Unlike existing synthetic data generation software, metasyn is built on a simple generative model that omits multivariate information. This choice enables transparency and auditability, keeps information leakage to a minimum, and enables privacy guarantees through a plug-in system. While the analytical validity of the generated data is thus intentionally limited, its potential uses are broad, including exploratory analyses, code development and testing, and external communication and teaching.