arXiv:2509.03204cs.LG2025-09

提出三种公平决策树设计新思路,填补了研究空白。

Exploring the Design Space of Fair Tree Learning Algorithms

  • 构建双目标树:同时优化预测性能与公平性,联合优化目标函数。
  • 采用约束驱动的贪心分裂:一旦违反公平约束即中止分裂,支持回溯探索。
  • 分离建模输出与敏感属性:两棵树独立训练,避免信息耦合导致的偏差。

决策树在公平性研究中备受关注,旨在提升预测性能的同时避免对不同群体的歧视。现有方法多在训练阶段施加约束,限制搜索空间以排除不满足公平指标的解。本文从目标变量y与敏感属性s的视角,系统梳理了树学习算法的设计空间:(i) 单棵树T,基于包含y、s与T的联合目标函数构建,如权衡最大化预测信息增益与最小化敏感属性影响;(ii) 单棵树模型,目标函数仅依赖y与T,而将s作为约束条件,通过贪心分裂并支持回溯来满足公平性;(iii) 双棵树结构,分别构建针对y与s的独立树,不共享结构,从而实现信息解耦。令人意外的是,此前文献仅研究了第一种及第二种的贪心变体。本文首次引入后两种方案,并在多个数据集上进行实验验证其有效性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Decision trees have been studied extensively in the context of fairness, aiming to maximize prediction performance while ensuring non-discrimination against different groups. Techniques in this space usually focus on imposing constraints at training time, constraining the search space so that solutions which display unacceptable values of relevant metrics are not considered, discarded, or discouraged. If we assume one target variable y and one sensitive attribute s, the design space of tree learning algorithms can be spanned as follows: (i) One can have one tree T that is built using an objective function that is a function of y, s, and T. For instance, one can build a tree based on the weighted information gain regarding y (maximizing) and s (minimizing). (ii) The second option is to have one tree model T that uses an objective function in y and T and a constraint on s and T. Here, s is no longer part of the objective, but part of a constraint. This can be achieved greedily by aborting a further split as soon as the condition that optimizes the objective in y fails to satisfy the constraint on s. A simple way to explore other splits is to backtrack during tree construction once a fairness constraint is violated. (iii) The third option is to have two trees T_y and T_s, one for y and one for s, such that the tree structure for y and s does not have to be shared. In this way, information regarding y and regarding s can be used independently, without having to constrain the choices in tree construction by the mutual information between the two variables. Quite surprisingly, of the three options, only the first one and the greedy variant of the second have been studied in the literature so far. In this paper, we introduce the above two additional options from that design space and characterize them experimentally on multiple datasets.

决策树公平性机器学习

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