揭示了模型准确率与公平性之间的根本关系,指出二者本质互补。
An Accounting Identity for Algorithmic Fairness
- 建立准确率与公平性的数学恒等式,量化不公平预算
- 准确率提升会自动压缩不公平总预算,反之亦然
- 适用于二分类和回归任务,为公平性设计提供新视角
我们推导出预测模型的公平性会计恒等式,将准确率与常见公平性标准联系起来。该恒等式表明:对于全局校准的模型,组内偏差加权和与组间误差不平衡之和等于一个‘总不公平预算’。在二分类任务中,该预算等于模型均方误差乘以不同群体在结果类别中的流行度差异。该恒等式包含经典不可能性结果作为特例,同时描述了当任一公平性指标未完全满足时的内在权衡。结果表明,在二分类任务中,准确率与公平性应被视为互补关系:提高准确率必然缩小总不公平预算,反之亦然。基准数据实验验证了理论,显示多数公平性干预手段本质上在公平性缺陷间进行替代;当准确性下降时,总不公平预算往往扩大。该结论可自然推广至非二分类任务,揭示额外结果信息如何缓解公平性冲突,并明确了二分类不可能性是否适用于回归任务的条件。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
We derive an accounting identity for predictive models that links accuracy with common fairness criteria. The identity shows that for globally calibrated models, the weighted sums of miscalibration within groups and error imbalance across groups is equal to a "total unfairness budget." For binary outcomes, this budget is the model's mean-squared error times the difference in group prevalence across outcome classes. The identity nests standard impossibility results as special cases, while also describing inherent tradeoffs when one or more fairness measures are not perfectly satisfied. The results suggest that accuracy and fairness are best viewed as complements in binary prediction tasks: increasing accuracy necessarily shrinks the total unfairness budget and vice-versa. Experiments on benchmark data confirm the theory and show that many fairness interventions largely substitute between fairness violations, and when they reduce accuracy they tend to expand the total unfairness budget. The results extend naturally to prediction tasks with non-binary outcomes, illustrating how additional outcome information can relax fairness incompatibilities and identifying conditions under which the binary-style impossibility does and does not extend to regression tasks.
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