[GNC-dev] Normalizing live data

[Wm]

On 02/02/2019 17:44, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 02, 2019 at 04:30:30PM +0100, Geert Janssens wrote:
>> Op zaterdag 2 februari 2019 14:31:43 CET schreef Hendrik Boom:
>>>> On 2/1/19 5:36 AM, Wm via gnucash-devel wrote:
>>>>> [2] as long as the transaction stream balances the actual numbers
>>>>> don't matter (their will be occasions where the numbers are important
>>>>> but these tend to be number extremes related to commodities rather
>>>>> than anyone using gnc to do a Mr Putin vs Mr Trump sports bet).? In
>>>>> most cases multiplying any matching numbers by the same semi-random
>>>>> should produce a good file for examination so long as it is done
>>>>> consistently [4]
>>>
>>> If the numbers in the file are integers times some account or
>>> currency-dependent unit, then just clculationg the greatest common
>>> divisor of all the obfuscated numbers will give a good guess as to the
>>> semirandom multiplier.
>>
>> Do you think that still is possible if a different random number was used for
>> each transaction ? (That's how I understood Wm's suggestion)
>>
>> Each transaction will have it's own random number. So for transaction A all
>> splits may have been multiplied with 450, for Transaction B all numbers may
>> have been multiplied by 500.
> 
> That might work.  That way eash transaction balances, but the account
> balances will be nonsense.
> 
> Still, by finding the gcd you can still produce a lower bound on the
> transaction values.  And if you, say, split off sales tax into a separate
> split your lower bound will oftern be the actual value.
> 
> And it's likely that one could also identify income and expense accounts as
> such by the pattern of debits vs credits.

You're presuming a level of snooping that I don't think exists amongst 
Geert, John, et al.

-- 
Wm