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Clustering is a fundamental problem in unsupervised machine learning, and fair variants of it have recently received significant attention due to its societal implications. In this work we introduce a novel definition of individual fairness…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Darshan Chakrabarti , John P. Dickerson , Seyed A. Esmaeili , Aravind Srinivasan , Leonidas Tsepenekas

We study fair clustering problems as proposed by Chierichetti et al. (NIPS 2017). Here, points have a sensitive attribute and all clusters in the solution are required to be balanced with respect to it (to counteract any form of…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-03-10 Melanie Schmidt , Chris Schwiegelshohn , Christian Sohler

A clustering may be considered as fair on pre-specified sensitive attributes if the proportions of sensitive attribute groups in each cluster reflect that in the dataset. In this paper, we consider the task of fair clustering for scenarios…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-27 Savitha Sam Abraham , Deepak P , Sowmya S Sundaram

We consider the $k$-clustering problem with $\ell_p$-norm cost, which includes $k$-median, $k$-means and $k$-center, under an individual notion of fairness proposed by Jung et al. [2020]: given a set of points $P$ of size $n$, a set of $k$…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-03-02 Ali Vakilian , Mustafa Yalçıner

A common distinction in fair machine learning, in particular in fair classification, is between group fairness and individual fairness. In the context of clustering, group fairness has been studied extensively in recent years; however,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-06-11 Matthäus Kleindessner , Pranjal Awasthi , Jamie Morgenstern

Clustering is an unsupervised learning task that aims to partition data into a set of clusters. In many applications, these clusters correspond to real-world constructs (e.g. electoral districts) whose benefit can only be attained by groups…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-09 Connor Lawless , Oktay Gunluk

We incorporate group fairness into the algorithmic centroid clustering problem, where $k$ centers are to be located to serve $n$ agents distributed in a metric space. We refine the notion of proportional fairness proposed in [Chen et al.,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-04-01 Bo Li , Lijun Li , Ankang Sun , Chenhao Wang , Yingfan Wang

Due to the growing concern about unsavory behaviors of machine learning models toward certain demographic groups, the notion of 'fairness' has recently drawn much attention from the community, thereby motivating the study of fairness in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-03 Minh Phu Vuong , Young-Ju Lee , Iván Ojeda-Ruiz , Chul-Ho Lee

Fair clustering has traditionally focused on ensuring equitable group representation or equalizing group-specific clustering costs. However, Dickerson et al. (2025) recently showed that these fairness notions may yield undesirable or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-15 Claire Jie Zhang , Seyed A. Esmaeili , Jamie Morgenstern

We study a variant of classical clustering formulations in the context of algorithmic fairness, known as diversity-aware clustering. In this variant we are given a collection of facility subsets, and a solution must contain at least a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-10-25 Suhas Thejaswi , Ameet Gadekar , Bruno Ordozgoiti , Michal Osadnik

In recent years, there has been a surge in effort to formalize notions of fairness in machine learning. We focus on centroid clustering--one of the fundamental tasks in unsupervised machine learning. We propose a new axiom ``proportionally…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Haris Aziz , Barton E. Lee , Sean Morota Chu , Jeremy Vollen

Hierarchical clustering studies a recursive partition of a data set into clusters of successively smaller size, and is a fundamental problem in data analysis. In this work we study the cost function for hierarchical clustering introduced by…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-12-17 Bogdan-Adrian Manghiuc , He Sun

Clustering is a well-studied unsupervised learning task that aims to partition data points into a number of clusters. In many applications, these clusters correspond to real-world constructs (e.g., electoral districts, playlists, TV…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-25 Connor Lawless , Oktay Gunluk

Clustering algorithms are ubiquitous in modern data science pipelines, and are utilized in numerous fields ranging from biology to facility location. Due to their widespread use, especially in societal resource allocation problems, recent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Anshuman Chhabra , Adish Singla , Prasant Mohapatra

This paper studies the fair range clustering problem in which the data points are from different demographic groups and the goal is to pick $k$ centers with the minimum clustering cost such that each group is at least minimally represented…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-23 Sèdjro S. Hotegni , Sepideh Mahabadi , Ali Vakilian

Consensus clustering seeks to combine multiple clusterings of the same dataset, potentially derived by considering various non-sensitive attributes by different agents in a multi-agent environment, into a single partitioning that best…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Diptarka Chakraborty , Kushagra Chatterjee , Debarati Das , Tien-Long Nguyen

In a recent work, [19] studied the following "fair" variants of classical clustering problems such as $k$-means and $k$-median: given a set of $n$ data points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ and a binary type associated to each data point, the goal is to…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-12-18 Lingxiao Huang , Shaofeng H. -C. Jiang , Nisheeth K. Vishnoi

Clustering algorithms may unintentionally propagate or intensify existing disparities, leading to unfair representations or biased decision-making. Current fair clustering methods rely on notions of fairness that do not capture any…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-12-15 Fritz Bayer , Drago Plecko , Niko Beerenwinkel , Jack Kuipers

There has been much interest recently in developing fair clustering algorithms that seek to do justice to the representation of groups defined along sensitive attributes such as race and gender. We observe that clustering algorithms could…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-02 Stanley Simoes , Deepak P , Muiris MacCarthaigh

We study the fair variant of the classic $k$-median problem introduced by Chierichetti et al. [2017]. In the standard $k$-median problem, given an input pointset $P$, the goal is to find $k$ centers $C$ and assign each input point to one of…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-06-12 Arturs Backurs , Piotr Indyk , Krzysztof Onak , Baruch Schieber , Ali Vakilian , Tal Wagner