Repository logo

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
  1. Home
  2. Academic and Research Output
  3. Conferences, Workshops, Symposiums, and Seminars
  4. A Statistical Test for Probabilistic Fairness
 
conference paper

A Statistical Test for Probabilistic Fairness

Taskesen, Bahar  
•
Blanchet, Jose
•
Kuhn, Daniel  
Show more
2021
ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency

Algorithms are now routinely used to make consequential decisions that affect human lives. Examples include college admissions, medical interventions or law enforcement. While algorithms empower us to harness all information hidden in vast amounts of data, they may inadvertently amplify existing biases in the available datasets. This concern has sparked increasing interest in fair machine learning, which aims to quantify and mitigate algorithmic discrimination. Indeed, machine learning models should undergo intensive tests to detect algorithmic biases before being deployed at scale. In this paper, we use ideas from the theory of optimal transport to propose a statistical hypothesis test for detecting unfair classifiers. Leveraging the geometry of the feature space, the test statistic quantifies the distance of the empirical distribution supported on the test samples to the manifold of distributions that render a pre-trained classifier fair. We develop a rigorous hypothesis testing mechanism for assessing the probabilistic fairness of any pre-trained logistic classifier, and we show both theoretically as well as empirically that the proposed test is asymptotically correct. In addition, the proposed framework offers interpretability by identifying the most favorable perturbation of the data so that the given classifier becomes fair.

  • Details
  • Metrics
Type
conference paper
DOI
10.1145/3442188.3445927
Author(s)
Taskesen, Bahar  
Blanchet, Jose
Kuhn, Daniel  
Nguyen, Viet Anh  
Date Issued

2021

ISBN of the book

978-1-4503-8309-7

URL

View record in ArXiv

https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.04800
Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
RAO  
Event nameEvent date
ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency

March 3-10, 2021

Available on Infoscience
December 18, 2020
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/174145
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Contact
  • infoscience@epfl.ch

  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Follow us on LinkedIn
  • Follow us on X
  • Follow us on Youtube
AccessibilityLegal noticePrivacy policyCookie settingsEnd User AgreementGet helpFeedback

Infoscience is a service managed and provided by the Library and IT Services of EPFL. © EPFL, tous droits réservés