Multi-Group Fairness Evaluation via Conditional Value-at-Risk Testing

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Paes, Lucas Monteiro, Suresh, Ananda Theertha, Beutel, Alex, Calmon, Flavio P., Beirami, Ahmad
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Paes, Lucas Monteiro
Suresh, Ananda Theertha
Beutel, Alex
Calmon, Flavio P.
Beirami, Ahmad
author_facet Paes, Lucas Monteiro
Suresh, Ananda Theertha
Beutel, Alex
Calmon, Flavio P.
Beirami, Ahmad
contents Machine learning (ML) models used in prediction and classification tasks may display performance disparities across population groups determined by sensitive attributes (e.g., race, sex, age). We consider the problem of evaluating the performance of a fixed ML model across population groups defined by multiple sensitive attributes (e.g., race and sex and age). Here, the sample complexity for estimating the worst-case performance gap across groups (e.g., the largest difference in error rates) increases exponentially with the number of group-denoting sensitive attributes. To address this issue, we propose an approach to test for performance disparities based on Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). By allowing a small probabilistic slack on the groups over which a model has approximately equal performance, we show that the sample complexity required for discovering performance violations is reduced exponentially to be at most upper bounded by the square root of the number of groups. As a byproduct of our analysis, when the groups are weighted by a specific prior distribution, we show that Rényi entropy of order 2/3 of the prior distribution captures the sample complexity of the proposed CVaR test algorithm. Finally, we also show that there exists a non-i.i.d. data collection strategy that results in a sample complexity independent of the number of groups.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_03867
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Multi-Group Fairness Evaluation via Conditional Value-at-Risk Testing
Paes, Lucas Monteiro
Suresh, Ananda Theertha
Beutel, Alex
Calmon, Flavio P.
Beirami, Ahmad
Machine Learning
Computers and Society
Information Theory
Machine learning (ML) models used in prediction and classification tasks may display performance disparities across population groups determined by sensitive attributes (e.g., race, sex, age). We consider the problem of evaluating the performance of a fixed ML model across population groups defined by multiple sensitive attributes (e.g., race and sex and age). Here, the sample complexity for estimating the worst-case performance gap across groups (e.g., the largest difference in error rates) increases exponentially with the number of group-denoting sensitive attributes. To address this issue, we propose an approach to test for performance disparities based on Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). By allowing a small probabilistic slack on the groups over which a model has approximately equal performance, we show that the sample complexity required for discovering performance violations is reduced exponentially to be at most upper bounded by the square root of the number of groups. As a byproduct of our analysis, when the groups are weighted by a specific prior distribution, we show that Rényi entropy of order 2/3 of the prior distribution captures the sample complexity of the proposed CVaR test algorithm. Finally, we also show that there exists a non-i.i.d. data collection strategy that results in a sample complexity independent of the number of groups.
title Multi-Group Fairness Evaluation via Conditional Value-at-Risk Testing
topic Machine Learning
Computers and Society
Information Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.03867