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Machine learning algorithms can produce biased outcome/prediction, typically, against minorities and under-represented sub-populations. Therefore, fairness is emerging as an important requirement for the large scale application of machine…
We present a basis for studying questions of cause and effect in statistics which subsumes and reconciles the models proposed by Pearl, Robins, Rubin and others, and which, as far as mathematical notions and notation are concerned, is…
Addressing the problem of fairness is crucial to safely use machine learning algorithms to support decisions with a critical impact on people's lives such as job hiring, child maltreatment, disease diagnosis, loan granting, etc. Several…
Since the rise of fair machine learning as a critical field of inquiry, many different notions on how to quantify and measure discrimination have been proposed in the literature. Some of these notions, however, were shown to be mutually…
Recent work highlights the role of causality in designing equitable decision-making algorithms. It is not immediately clear, however, how existing causal conceptions of fairness relate to one another, or what the consequences are of using…
In this paper we look at popular fairness methods that use causal counterfactuals. These methods capture the intuitive notion that a prediction is fair if it coincides with the prediction that would have been made if someone's race, gender…
Fairness in decision-making processes is often quantified using probabilistic metrics. However, these metrics may not fully capture the real-world consequences of unfairness. In this article, we adopt a utility-based approach to more…
Fairness is increasingly recognized as a critical component of machine learning systems. However, it is the underlying data on which these systems are trained that often reflect discrimination, suggesting a database repair problem. Existing…
In this paper we propose a causal modeling approach to intersectional fairness, and a flexible, task-specific method for computing intersectionally fair rankings. Rankings are used in many contexts, ranging from Web search results to…
Causality is a subject of philosophical debate and a central scientific issue with a long history. In the statistical domain, the study of cause and effect based on the notion of `fairness' in comparisons dates back several hundred years,…
The primary objective of this paper is to revisit Simpson's paradox using a statistical misspecification perspective. It is argued that the reversal of statistical associations is sometimes spurious, stemming from invalid probabilistic…
The occurrence of Simpson's paradox (SP) in $2\times 2$ contingency tables has been well studied. The present work comprehensively revisits this problem using a combination of philosophical reflections, causal considerations, and…
Statisticians have warned us since the early days of their discipline that experimental correlation between two observations by no means implies the existence of a causal relation. The question about what clues exist in observational data…
This paper discusses different needs and approaches to establishing ``causation'' that are relevant in legal cases involving statistical input based on epidemiological (or more generally observational or population-based) information. We…
Bell inequalities follow from a set of seemingly natural assumptions about how to provide a causal model of a Bell experiment. In the face of their violation, two types of causal models that modify some of these assumptions have been…
In this paper, we consider the problem of fair statistical inference involving outcome variables. Examples include classification and regression problems, and estimating treatment effects in randomized trials or observational data. The…
In observational studies of discrimination, the most common statistical approaches consider either the rate at which decisions are made (benchmark tests) or the success rate of those decisions (outcome tests). Both tests, however, have…
Bell's [Physics 1 (1964) 195-200] theorem is popularly supposed to establish the nonlocality of quantum physics. Violation of Bell's inequality in experiments such as that of Aspect, Dalibard and Roger [Phys. Rev. Lett. 49 (1982) 1804-1807]…
As virtually all aspects of our lives are increasingly impacted by algorithmic decision making systems, it is incumbent upon us as a society to ensure such systems do not become instruments of unfair discrimination on the basis of gender,…
In recent years, there has been increasing interest in causal reasoning for designing fair decision-making systems due to its compatibility with legal frameworks, interpretability for human stakeholders, and robustness to spurious…