arXiv:2505.09471stat.MLcs.LG2025-05NeurIPS被引 1

提出公平性约束下的函数分类新框架,实现群体间差异可控的精准分类。

Fairness-aware Bayes optimal functional classification

  • 基于后处理思想设计公平函数线性判别分析算法
  • 在弱结构假设下实现公平性与误差风险的双重控制
  • 适用于需要公平性的函数数据分析场景

算法公平性已成为机器学习的核心议题,减少不同子群体间的差异是快速发展的研究方向。本文系统研究在公平性约束下的函数数据分类问题,确保分类器的差异水平低于预设阈值。提出统一的公平性感知函数分类框架,应对无限维函数空间中的密度比缺失和后验概率不可计算等关键挑战,并探讨函数分类特有的现象。进一步设计了后处理算法——公平函数线性判别分析(Fair-FLDA),针对同方差高斯过程,通过群体层面的阈值调整实现公平性。在弱特征空间结构假设下,建立了公平性和超出风险的理论保证。作为副产品,我们的结果首次给出了标准FLDA的超出风险控制。理论结果通过合成与真实数据集上的大量实验得到验证,凸显算法实用性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Algorithmic fairness has become a central topic in machine learning, and mitigating disparities across different subpopulations has emerged as a rapidly growing research area. In this paper, we systematically study the classification of functional data under fairness constraints, ensuring the disparity level of the classifier is controlled below a pre-specified threshold. We propose a unified framework for fairness-aware functional classification, tackling an infinite-dimensional functional space, addressing key challenges from the absence of density ratios and intractability of posterior probabilities, and discussing unique phenomena in functional classification. We further design a post-processing algorithm, Fair Functional Linear Discriminant Analysis classifier (Fair-FLDA), which targets at homoscedastic Gaussian processes and achieves fairness via group-wise thresholding. Under weak structural assumptions on eigenspace, theoretical guarantees on fairness and excess risk controls are established. As a byproduct, our results cover the excess risk control of the standard FLDA as a special case, which, to the best of our knowledge, is first time seen. Our theoretical findings are complemented by extensive numerical experiments on synthetic and real datasets, highlighting the practicality of our designed algorithm.

公平性函数分类判别分析统计学习

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