Counterfactually Fair Conformal Prediction

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Guldogan, Ozgur, Sarna, Neeraj, Li, Yuanyuan, Berger, Michael
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Guldogan, Ozgur
Sarna, Neeraj
Li, Yuanyuan
Berger, Michael
author_facet Guldogan, Ozgur
Sarna, Neeraj
Li, Yuanyuan
Berger, Michael
contents While counterfactual fairness of point predictors is well studied, its extension to prediction sets--central to fair decision-making under uncertainty--remains underexplored. On the other hand, conformal prediction (CP) provides efficient, distribution-free, finite-sample valid prediction sets, yet does not ensure counterfactual fairness. We close this gap by developing Counterfactually Fair Conformal Prediction (CF-CP) that produces counterfactually fair prediction sets. Through symmetrization of conformity scores across protected-attribute interventions, we prove that CF-CP results in counterfactually fair prediction sets while maintaining the marginal coverage property. Furthermore, we empirically demonstrate that on both synthetic and real datasets, across regression and classification tasks, CF-CP achieves the desired counterfactual fairness and meets the target coverage rate with minimal increase in prediction set size. CF-CP offers a simple, training-free route to counterfactually fair uncertainty quantification.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_08724
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Counterfactually Fair Conformal Prediction
Guldogan, Ozgur
Sarna, Neeraj
Li, Yuanyuan
Berger, Michael
Machine Learning
While counterfactual fairness of point predictors is well studied, its extension to prediction sets--central to fair decision-making under uncertainty--remains underexplored. On the other hand, conformal prediction (CP) provides efficient, distribution-free, finite-sample valid prediction sets, yet does not ensure counterfactual fairness. We close this gap by developing Counterfactually Fair Conformal Prediction (CF-CP) that produces counterfactually fair prediction sets. Through symmetrization of conformity scores across protected-attribute interventions, we prove that CF-CP results in counterfactually fair prediction sets while maintaining the marginal coverage property. Furthermore, we empirically demonstrate that on both synthetic and real datasets, across regression and classification tasks, CF-CP achieves the desired counterfactual fairness and meets the target coverage rate with minimal increase in prediction set size. CF-CP offers a simple, training-free route to counterfactually fair uncertainty quantification.
title Counterfactually Fair Conformal Prediction
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08724