The Shapley value has been proposed as a solution to many applications in
machine learning, including for equitable valuation of data. Shapley values are
computationally expensive and involve the entire dataset. The query for a
point's Shapley value can also compromise the statistical privacy of other data
points. We observe that in machine learning problems such as empirical risk
minimization, and in many learning algorithms (such as those with uniform
stability), a diminishing returns property holds, where marginal benefit per
data point decreases rapidly with data sample size. Based on this property, we
propose a new stratified approximation method called the Layered Shapley
Algorithm. We prove that this method operates on small (O(\polylog(n))) random
samples of data and small sized ($O(\log n)$) coalitions to achieve the results
with guaranteed probabilistic accuracy, and can be modified to incorporate
differential privacy. Experimental results show that the algorithm correctly
identifies high-value data points that improve validation accuracy, and that
the differentially private evaluations preserve approximate ranking of data.