Decision Theory for Discrimination-aware Classification

Social discrimination (e.g., against females) arising from data mining techniques is a growing concern worldwide. In recent years, several methods have been proposed for making classifiers learned over discriminatory data discrimination-aware. However, these methods suffer from two major shortcomings: (1) They require either modifying the discriminatory data or tweaking a specific classification algorithm and (2) They are not flexible w.r.t. discrimination control and multiple sensitive attribute handling. In this paper, we present two solutions for discrimination-aware classification that neither require data modification nor classifier tweaking. Our first and second solutions exploit, respectively, the reject option of probabilistic classifier(s) and the disagreement region of general classifier ensembles to reduce discrimination. We relate both solutions with decision theory for better understanding of the process. Our experiments using real-world datasets demonstrate that our solutions outperform existing state-of-the-art methods, especially at low discrimination which is a significant advantage. The superior performance coupled with flexible control over discrimination and easy applicability to multiple sensitive attributes makes our solutions an important step forward in practical discrimination-aware classification.