FAIM (FAir Interpolation Method), described in Beyond Incompatibility: Interpolation between Mutually Exclusive Fairness Criteria in Classification Problems, is a post-processing algorithm for achieving a combination of group-fairness criteria (equalized false positive rates, equalized false negative rates, group calibration).
🚧 This README.md is under construction! 🚧
Ensure you have a environment with Python>=3.9, preferably by creating a virtual environment.
One way to do this is using miniconda. Install miniconda following the instructions on this page and create a python 3.10 environment:
conda create -n faim python=3.12Activate the environment
conda activate faimCheck that the version of python running comes from the faim environment:
which pythonThere are two implementations of FAIM in the FAIM package, one is the origianl research code which can be used to reproduce all experimental results and figures from the paper. The other is a revamped implementation designed to be merged into Fairlearn. This section covers both.
Note, if you intend to develop the package and/or contribute, follow the install instructions in the Development Environment section below instead. Otherwise, follow these instructions.
As of 16.07.2024, this is a work in progress that will stabilize once the code is merged with Fairlearn, in which case this section will be obsolete. But to use the current version of FAIM to post-process your scores to fairer scores, simply install FAIM as follows and scroll down to the Usage section for instructions on how to use the FAIM Fairlearn API.
pip install faim
The package and experiment CLI used to reproduce all the results in the paper can be installed with:
pip install "faim[experiment]"Many of the figures are rendered with LaTeX (via Matplotlib) and require latex be installed.
See this Matplotlib documentation page for instructions.
If you're on a Mac, you can install the LaTeX distribution MacTeX using brew cask:
brew install --cask mactexFrom the environment where you installed the package, run
pip uninstall faim
⚠️ WARNING⚠️ The goal is to merge the code into the Fairlearn library making it available under the post-processing submodule. This version of the code is being prepared for a pull request into the Fairlearn and should be considered unstable and subject to change as we prepare and test this new implementation. Use with caution! If stability is important and you do not want to wait to use FAIM, consider using the Paper Implementation for now.
In FAIM, the user chooses via hyperparameter theta how to balance between otherwise
mutually exclusive fairness criteria.
FAIM currently supports three fairness criteria:
- Calibration between groups (scores actually correspond to probability of positive)
- Balance for the negative class (average score of truly negative individuals equal across groups)
- Balance for the positive class (average score of truly positive individuals equal across groups)
The sections below show a usage example using the Fairlearn implementation of FAIM, which can also be run via notebooks/fairlearn-api.ipynb .
Load some test data.
import pandas as pd
synthetic_data_from_paper = pd.read_csv(
"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MilkaLichtblau/faim/main/data/synthetic/2groups/2022-01-12/dataset.csv"
)
y_scores = synthetic_data_from_paper.pred_score
y_scores = (y_scores - y_scores.min())/(y_scores.max() - y_scores.min())
y_ground_truth = synthetic_data_from_paper.groundTruthLabel.astype(bool)
sensitive_features = synthetic_data_from_paper.groupNote above, the scores above are normalized between 0 and 1 because FAIM expects this to be able calculate meaningful fair score distributions (don't worry, FAIM will raise an error if non normalized scores are passed).
Now fit a FAIM model that maps scores between a balance of one or more of the three fairness criteria above (below a balance between calibration and balance for the negative class is used for example purposes):
from faim.fairlearn_api import FAIM
thetas = [1/2, 1/2, 0] # balance between calibration and balance for the negative class
faim = FAIM(thetas=thetas)
faim.fit(y_scores, y_ground_truth, sensitive_features)To map new scores with the fitted faim model, use the predict method:
faim.predict(y_scores, sensitive_features)This section contains information for reproducing experiments in our paper.
Ensure the package has been installed with [experiment] extra requirements before continuing
(see Installation | Paper Implementation)! Don't forget to restart your terminal before
using the faim CLI in the steps below.
The CLI can be used to prepare any of the three datasets used in the paper:
faim-experiment --prepare-data DATASETwhere DATASET is one of:
synthetic-from-papercompaszalando[waiting for permission to release, contact us for more information]
The dataset will be downloaded, and prepared to a folder called prepared-data.
The following sections include info about each dataset:
The raw dataset in the GitHub repo corresponds to synthetic prediction and ground truth scores for two groups, for each group sampling from a corresponding binormal distribution.
The raw data was obtained from ProPublica's COMPAS Analysis repository.
Under construction, more information to follow!
Having prepared data following the instruction above, you are ready to run a FAIM experiment:
faim-experiment --run PREPARED-DATASET LOW_SCORE_VAL,HIGH_SCORE_VAL THETAS PREPARED_DATA_FILEPATHPREPARED-DATASET is now one of the following options (depending on what has been prepared):
synthetic-from-paper(prepared using--prepare-data synthetic-from-paper)compasGender(prepared using--prepare-data compas)compasRace(prepared using--prepare-data compas)compasAge(prepared using--prepare-data compas)zalando(prepared using--prepare-data zalando) [waiting for permission to release, contact us for more information]
LOW_SCORE_VAL,HIGH_SCORE_VAL are two numbers that define the score range.
THETAS correspond to the fairness compromise you want. There are three thetas per group corresponding to the
desired amount of the three fairness criteria that the system should achieve:
- group calibration
- equalized false negative rates
- equalized false positive rates
Note, as discussed in the paper, thetas = 1,1,1 does not indicate that the system will simultaneously achieve all three (mutually incompatible) fairness criteria, but rather the result will be a compromise between all three.
See the paper for more details.
Finally, PREPARED_DATA_FILEPATH corresponds to the filepath of the prepared data.
Run all of the following from the same folder where faim-experiment --prepare-data was run.
In each example, a FAIM post-processor is trained and evaluated with results saved under the results folder:
- Train FAIM model on synthetic dataset with callibration as fairness correction
faim-experiment --run synthetic-from-paper 0.1 1,0,0,1,0,0 prepared-data/synthetic/2groups/2022-01-12/dataset.csv
- Train FAIM model on synthetic dataset to achieve a combination of all three fairness criteria.
faim-experiment --run synthetic-from-paper 0.1 1,1,1,1,1,1 prepared-data/synthetic/2groups/2022-01-12/dataset.csv
Note, that at the moment we do not allow all thetas to be 0.
During the calculation the faim-algorithm creates a lot of plots that will help you to evaluate your results visually. You'll find them in the respective result folder of your experimental run, e.g., for experiment
faim-experiment --run synthetic-from-paper 0.1 1,0,0,1,0,0 prepared-data/synthetic/2groups/2022-01-12/dataset.csv
all results are saved to results/synthetic/2groups/2022-01-12/1,0,0,1,0,0/.
These results include:
- resultData.csv, which contains the original dataset plus four a new columns: SA, SB, SC, and the final fair scores that correspond to the given thetas
- plot of the raw score distribution per group (truncatedRawScoreDistributionPerGroup.png)
- plots of SA, SB, and SC per group (muA_perGroup.png, SBDistributionPerGroup.png, SCDistributionPerGroup.png
- plot of the fair score distribution per group (fairScoreDistributionPerGroup.png)
- plots of the transport maps per group (fairScoreReplacementStrategy.png)
For any folder with results, the following command can be used to evaluate performance and error rates before and after the application of FAIM:
faim-experiment --evaluate DATASETwhere DATASET is one of the following options:
synthetic-from-paper(recursively searches for all resultData.csv under results/synthetic)compas(recursively searches for all resultData.csv under results/compas)zalando(recursively searches for all resultData.csv under results/zalando)
For example, if you run faim-experiment --evaluate synthetic-from-paper,
then for any (relative) experiment folder under results/synthetic/ that contains the file resultsData.csv,
an eval.txt file will be created containing following metrics:
- The probability of the protected groups to be labeled positive w.r.t. the non-protected group, for the three cases ground truth, original prediction, and fair score prediction.
- Accuracy, Precision, and Recall (by class and macro/weighted averages) for the original and the fair model, plus the difference between them
- False positive and false negative rates for the original and the fair model, plus the differcence between them
- Confusion matrices for each group and all groups
Should you wish to calculate other metrics beyond what are shown in the paper, eval.txt should provide everything needed to do so.
To develop and/or contribute, clone the repository
git clone <this repo URL>From the root directory of the git repository, install the package with pip in editable mode (-e)
with extra requirements for experiments (experiment) and development (dev):
pip install -e ".[experiment,dev]"Don't confuse the [] to mean optional. The ".[experiment, dev]" notation tells pip to install extra
"experiment" and "dev" requirements including things like pytest and pre-commit.
When contributing, be sure to install (and use) our pre-commit hooks:
pre-commit install -t pre-commit -t pre-push