Estimating Fair Graphs from Graph-Stationary Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Navarro, Madeline, Buciulea, Andrei, Rey, Samuel, Marques, Antonio G., Segarra, Santiago
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Navarro, Madeline
Buciulea, Andrei
Rey, Samuel
Marques, Antonio G.
Segarra, Santiago
author_facet Navarro, Madeline
Buciulea, Andrei
Rey, Samuel
Marques, Antonio G.
Segarra, Santiago
contents We estimate fair graphs from graph-stationary nodal observations such that connections are not biased with respect to sensitive attributes. Edges in real-world graphs often exhibit preferences for connecting certain pairs of groups. Biased connections can not only exacerbate but even induce unfair treatment for downstream graph-based tasks. We therefore consider group and individual fairness for graphs corresponding to group- and node-level definitions, respectively. To evaluate the fairness of a given graph, we provide multiple bias metrics, including novel measurements in the spectral domain. Furthermore, we propose Fair Spectral Templates (FairSpecTemp), an optimization-based method with two variants for estimating fair graphs from stationary graph signals, a general model for graph data subsuming many existing ones. One variant of FairSpecTemp exploits commutativity properties of graph stationarity while directly constraining bias, while the other implicitly encourages fair estimates by restricting bias in the graph spectrum and is thus more flexible. Our methods enjoy high probability performance bounds, yielding a conditional tradeoff between fairness and accuracy. In particular, our analysis reveals that accuracy need not be sacrificed to recover fair graphs. We evaluate FairSpecTemp on synthetic and real-world data sets to illustrate its effectiveness and highlight the advantages of both variants of FairSpecTemp.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_07536
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Estimating Fair Graphs from Graph-Stationary Data
Navarro, Madeline
Buciulea, Andrei
Rey, Samuel
Marques, Antonio G.
Segarra, Santiago
Machine Learning
Signal Processing
We estimate fair graphs from graph-stationary nodal observations such that connections are not biased with respect to sensitive attributes. Edges in real-world graphs often exhibit preferences for connecting certain pairs of groups. Biased connections can not only exacerbate but even induce unfair treatment for downstream graph-based tasks. We therefore consider group and individual fairness for graphs corresponding to group- and node-level definitions, respectively. To evaluate the fairness of a given graph, we provide multiple bias metrics, including novel measurements in the spectral domain. Furthermore, we propose Fair Spectral Templates (FairSpecTemp), an optimization-based method with two variants for estimating fair graphs from stationary graph signals, a general model for graph data subsuming many existing ones. One variant of FairSpecTemp exploits commutativity properties of graph stationarity while directly constraining bias, while the other implicitly encourages fair estimates by restricting bias in the graph spectrum and is thus more flexible. Our methods enjoy high probability performance bounds, yielding a conditional tradeoff between fairness and accuracy. In particular, our analysis reveals that accuracy need not be sacrificed to recover fair graphs. We evaluate FairSpecTemp on synthetic and real-world data sets to illustrate its effectiveness and highlight the advantages of both variants of FairSpecTemp.
title Estimating Fair Graphs from Graph-Stationary Data
topic Machine Learning
Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07536