# De-biasing Classifiers with Themis-ml¶

Tutorial {{ fat }} Conference 2018

Author: Niels Bantilan

Email: niels.bantilan@gmail.com

Created on: 1/29/2018

# Background¶

Decision support systems (DSS) are information systems that help people make decisions in a particular context like medical diagnosis, loan-granting, and hiring. DSSs have traditionally been built on expert-derived rules-based methods, but as machine learning (ML) is integrated into these systems, we need better tools to measure and mitigate discriminatory patterns in both training data and the predictions made by ML models.

This tutorial introduces themis-ml [1], an open source Python library for measuring and reducing potential discrimination (PD) in machine learning systems.

At a high level, themis-ml defines discrimination as something that occurs when an action is based on biases that systematically benefits one group of people over another based on certain social attributes (legally known as protected classes such as race, gender, and religion).

In the machine learning context, this means that an ML model is discriminatory if it generates predictions that systematically benefits one social group over another. Themis-ml builds on the sklearn API [2] to provide a fairness-aware machine learning interface (FMLI), which defines an interface that incorporates discrimination discovery and fairness-aware methods into a typical ML workflow.

You find the origin source code for this document here.

# Outline¶

In this tutorial we'll use the German Credit Dataset to build intuition around the a few of the main concepts around discrimination discovery and fairness-aware machine learning. Specifically, this tutorial will go over how to:

1. Measure potential discrimination with respect to the target variable credit risk and two socially sensitive attributes sex and foreigner.
2. Compare a set of classifiers with the fairness-aware estimators provided by themis-ml with a baseline fairness-unaware model.
3. Assess the fairness-utility tradeoff based on the experimental results we found in step 2.

# Installation¶

Currently Python 2.7 and 3.6 are supported. You can use conda or pip to install themis-ml.

pip install themis-ml

It's highly recommended that you use conda. To install conda, follow the instructions here.

# create virtual environment
conda create -n themis-ml python=<version>  # <version> = 2.7 or 3.6

# install themis-ml
conda install -c cosmicbboy themis-ml

themis-ml provides a convenience function for loading the German Credit Dataset:

In [1]:
from themis_ml.datasets import german_credit

raw_data = german_credit(raw=True)

Out[1]:
status_of_existing_checking_account duration_in_month credit_history purpose credit_amount savings_account/bonds present_employment_since installment_rate_in_percentage_of_disposable_income personal_status_and_sex other_debtors/guarantors ... property age_in_years other_installment_plans housing number_of_existing_credits_at_this_bank job number_of_people_being_liable_to_provide_maintenance_for telephone foreign_worker credit_risk
0 1 6 critical_account/other_credits_existing_not_at... radio/television 1169 0 4 4 male_single none ... real_estate 67 none own 2 2 1 1 1 1
1 2 48 existing_credits_paid_back_duly_till_now radio/television 5951 1 2 2 female_divorced/separated/married none ... real_estate 22 none own 1 2 1 0 1 0
2 0 12 critical_account/other_credits_existing_not_at... education 2096 1 3 2 male_single none ... real_estate 49 none own 1 1 2 0 1 1
3 1 42 existing_credits_paid_back_duly_till_now furniture/equipment 7882 1 3 2 male_single guarantor ... building_society_savings_agreement/life_insurance 45 none for free 1 2 2 0 1 1
4 1 24 delay_in_paying_off_in_the_past car_(new) 4870 1 2 3 male_single none ... unknown/no_property 53 none for free 2 2 2 0 1 0

5 rows × 21 columns

# Measuring Potential Discrimination¶

For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll use mean difference as our measure of potential discrimination with respect to a binary target variable credit risk and two protected classes sex and immigration status.

This metric belongs to a class of group-level discrimination measures that captures differences in outcome between populations, e.g. female vs. male [3]. In contrast, individual-level measures capture differences in outcome between an individual and a set of similar peers, where similarity is formalized as some distance function parameterized by the feature space.

The assumptions that we'll make in measuring PD in this exercise are the following:

1. The target $y \in \{0, 1\}$ is binary variable where $y^+ = 1$ is a beneficial outcome (e.g. low credit risk) and $y^- = 0$ is a harmful outcome (e.g. high credit risk)
2. The protected attribute $s \in \{d, a\}$ is a binary variable where $d = 1$ is some putatively disadvantaged group and $a = 0$ is an advantaged group.
In [2]:
from themis_ml.metrics import mean_difference

# target variable
# values: 1 = low credit risk, 0 = high credit risk
credit_risk = raw_data["credit_risk"]

# display frequency counts of each value
credit_risk.value_counts()

Out[2]:
1    700
0    300
Name: credit_risk, dtype: int64
In [3]:
# get sex of the individual from the "personal_status_and_sex" column.
# values: 1 = female, 0 = male
sex = raw_data["personal_status_and_sex"].map(
lambda x: {"male": 0, "female": 1}[x.split("_")[0]])

# display frequency counts of each value
sex.value_counts()

Out[3]:
0    690
1    310
Name: personal_status_and_sex, dtype: int64
In [4]:
# get foreign worker status: 1 = yes, 0 = no
foreign = raw_data["foreign_worker"]

# display frequency counts of each value
foreign.value_counts()

Out[4]:
1    963
0     37
Name: foreign_worker, dtype: int64
In [5]:
print("Mean difference scores:")
print("protected class = sex: %0.03f, 95%% CI [%0.03f-%0.03f]" %
mean_difference(credit_risk, sex))
# 0.0748013090229
print("protected class = foreign: %0.03f, 95%% CI [%0.03f-%0.03f]" %
mean_difference(credit_risk, foreign))
# 0.199264685246

Mean difference scores:
protected class = sex: 0.075, 95% CI [0.013-0.136]
protected class = foreign: 0.199, 95% CI [0.049-0.349]


The mean differences above suggest that men and citizen workers are more likely to have low credit risks compared to women and foreign workers, respectively.

The themis-ml metrics functions compute confidence intervals by default, since it's important to come up with confidence bounds for our estimate of potential discrimination.

# De-biasing Experiment¶

In this experiment, we specify three conditions, all using LogisticRegression as the classifier to keep things simple:

1. Baseline ($B$): classifier trained on all available input variables, including protected attributes.
2. Remove Protected Attribute ($RPA$): classifier where input variables do not contain protected attributes. This is the naive fairness-aware approach.
3. Reject-Option Classification ($ROC$): classifier using the reject-option classification method.
4. Additive Counterfactually Fair Model ($ACF$): classifier using the additive counterfactually fair method.

In this toy example, we'll be using mean_difference as our "fairness" metric, and area under the curve auc as our "utility" metric.

## Reject-Option Classification¶

ROC works by training an initial classifier on your dataset $D$, generating predicted probabilities on the test set, and then computing the proximity of each prediction to the decision boundary learned by the classifier [5].

Within this boundary defined by the critical region threshold $\theta$, where $0.5 < \theta < 1$, $X_d$ are assigned a label $y = 1$ and $X_a$ are assigned as $y = 0$, where $X_d$ are disadvantaged observations and $X_a$ are advantaged observations.

ACF, as described by [6] within the framework of counterfactual fairness, is the idea that we model the correlations between $s$ and features in $X$ by training linear models to predict each feature $X_j$ using $s$ as input.

Then, we can compute the residuals $\epsilon_{ij}$ between predicted and true feature values for each observation $i$ and feature $j$. The final model is then trained on $\epsilon_{ij}$ as features to predict $y$.

Before training our models, we first need to set up our experiment harness, which includes the features sets, inputs $X$, output $y$, and protected attributes $s_{sex}$ and $s_{foreigner}$.

Here we'll use 5-fold, 20x RepeatedStratifiedKFold in order to obtain a better estimate of test performance and fairness.

In [6]:
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split

training_data = german_credit()

# define feature sets:
# 1. including protected attributes
features = [
'duration_in_month', 'credit_amount', 'installment_rate_in_percentage_of_disposable_income',
'present_residence_since', 'age_in_years', 'number_of_existing_credits_at_this_bank',
'number_of_people_being_liable_to_provide_maintenance_for', 'status_of_existing_checking_account',
'savings_account/bonds', 'present_employment_since', 'job', 'telephone', 'foreign_worker',
'credit_history_all_credits_at_this_bank_paid_back_duly',
'credit_history_critical_account/other_credits_existing_not_at_this_bank',
'credit_history_delay_in_paying_off_in_the_past', 'credit_history_existing_credits_paid_back_duly_till_now',
'purpose_car_(new)', 'purpose_car_(used)', 'purpose_domestic_appliances', 'purpose_education',
'purpose_repairs', 'purpose_retraining', 'personal_status_and_sex_female_divorced/separated/married',
'personal_status_and_sex_male_divorced/separated', 'personal_status_and_sex_male_married/widowed',
'personal_status_and_sex_male_single', 'other_debtors/guarantors_co-applicant',
'other_debtors/guarantors_guarantor', 'other_debtors/guarantors_none',
'property_building_society_savings_agreement/life_insurance',
'property_car_or_other', 'property_real_estate', 'property_unknown/no_property',
'other_installment_plans_bank', 'other_installment_plans_none',
]
# 2. removing variables related to sex
features_no_sex = [
f for f in features if f not in [
'personal_status_and_sex_female_divorced/separated/married',
'personal_status_and_sex_male_divorced/separated',
'personal_status_and_sex_male_married/widowed',
'personal_status_and_sex_male_single']]

# 3. removing variables related to immigration status
features_no_frn = [f for f in features if f != "foreign_worker"]

X = training_data[features].values
X_no_sex = training_data[features_no_sex].values
X_no_frn = training_data[features_no_frn].values
y = training_data["credit_risk"].values
s_sex = sex.values
s_frn = foreign.values


Now we're ready to train our models.

In [12]:
import pandas as pd

from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
from sklearn.metrics import roc_auc_score
from sklearn.model_selection import RepeatedStratifiedKFold
from sklearn.base import clone

from themis_ml.postprocessing.reject_option_classification import \
SingleROClassifier
from themis_ml.linear_model import LinearACFClassifier

METRICS_COLUMNS = [
"mean_diff_sex", "mean_diff_foreign", "auc_sex", "auc_foreign"]

def run_experiment_iteration(
X, X_no_sex, X_no_frn, y, s_sex, s_frn, train, test):
"""Run the experiment on a particular set of train and test indices."""

# store our metrics here. This will be a list of lists, where the inner
# list is contains the following metadata:
# - "name"
# - fairness metric with respect to sex
# - fairness metric with respect to foreign status
# - utility metric with respect to sex
# - utility metric with respect to foreign status
metrics = []

# define our model.
logistic_clf = LogisticRegression(penalty="l2", C=0.001, class_weight="balanced")
baseline_clf = logistic_clf
rpa_clf = logistic_clf
roc_clf = SingleROClassifier(estimator=logistic_clf)
acf_clf = LinearACFClassifier(
target_estimator=logistic_clf,
binary_residual_type="absolute")

# train baseline model
baseline_clf.fit(X[train], y[train])
baseline_preds = baseline_clf.predict(X[test])
baseline_auc = roc_auc_score(y[test], baseline_preds)
metrics.append([
"B",
mean_difference(baseline_preds, s_sex[test])[0],
mean_difference(baseline_preds, s_frn[test])[0],
baseline_auc, baseline_auc  # repeated because the two AUC values are the
# same in the baseline case
])

# train "remove protected attributes" model. Here we have to train two
# seperate ones for sex and foreign status.

# model trained with no explicitly sex-related variables
rpa_preds_no_sex = rpa_clf.fit(
X_no_sex[train], y[train]).predict(X_no_sex[test])
# model trained with no explicitly foreign-related variables
rpa_preds_no_frn = rpa_clf.fit(
X_no_frn[train], y[train]).predict(X_no_frn[test])
metrics.append([
"RPA",
mean_difference(rpa_preds_no_sex, s_sex[test])[0],
mean_difference(rpa_preds_no_frn, s_frn[test])[0],
roc_auc_score(y[test], rpa_preds_no_sex),
roc_auc_score(y[test], rpa_preds_no_frn),
])

# train reject-option classification model.
roc_clf.fit(X[train], y[train])
roc_preds_sex = roc_clf.predict(X[test], s_sex[test])
roc_preds_frn = roc_clf.predict(X[test], s_frn[test])
metrics.append([
"ROC",
mean_difference(roc_preds_sex, s_sex[test])[0],
mean_difference(roc_preds_frn, s_frn[test])[0],
roc_auc_score(y[test], roc_preds_sex),
roc_auc_score(y[test], roc_preds_frn),
])

# train additive counterfactually fair model.
acf_preds_sex = acf_clf.fit(
X[train], y[train], s_sex[train]).predict(X[test], s_sex[test])
acf_preds_frn = acf_clf.fit(
X[train], y[train], s_frn[train]).predict(X[test], s_frn[test])
metrics.append([
"ACF",
mean_difference(acf_preds_sex, s_sex[test])[0],
mean_difference(acf_preds_frn, s_frn[test])[0],
roc_auc_score(y[test], acf_preds_sex),
roc_auc_score(y[test], acf_preds_frn),
])

# convert metrics list of lists into dataframe
return pd.DataFrame(
metrics, columns=["condition"] + METRICS_COLUMNS)

In [16]:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

%matplotlib inline

N_SPLITS = 5
N_REPEATS = 20

# add these two binary variables so that we can stratify the observations
# by protected class

# do 5-fold, 10x repeating cross validation so that we quantify the
# uncertainty around our metrics estimates.
cv = RepeatedStratifiedKFold(
n_splits=N_SPLITS, n_repeats=N_REPEATS, random_state=41)

metrics = []
print("Running cross-validation experiment...")
for i, (train_idx, test_idx) in enumerate(cv.split(X, y, groups=groups)):
metrics.append(
run_experiment_iteration(
X, X_no_sex, X_no_frn, y, s_sex, s_frn, train_idx, test_idx)
.assign(rep_fold=i))

# concatenate metrics from all cv-folds
metrics = pd.concat(metrics)

# compute mean point estimate for each metric and each condition
group_df = metrics.groupby("condition")
mean_metrics = (
group_df
[METRICS_COLUMNS].mean()
)
# compute standard error of the mean
stderr_metrics = (
group_df
[METRICS_COLUMNS].std()
) / np.sqrt(N_REPEATS * N_SPLITS)

Running cross-validation experiment...

In [17]:
# plot vertical bar chart
ax = mean_metrics.loc[reversed(["B", "RPA", "ROC", "ACF"])].plot(
kind="barh", figsize=(10, 6),
xerr=stderr_metrics.loc[reversed(["B", "RPA", "ROC", "ACF"])],
legend=False);
ax.legend(loc='upper right', bbox_to_anchor=(1.3, 0.6))
ax.spines['right'].set_visible(False)
ax.spines['left'].set_visible(False)
ax.spines['top'].set_visible(False)
ax.tick_params(axis='y', which='both', left='off')
ax.set_title(
"Fairness (mean diff) and Utility (auc) Metrics", fontsize=16);

In [20]:
mean_metrics.loc[["B", "RPA", "ROC", "ACF"]].rename(
columns=lambda x: "mean(%s)" % x)

Out[20]:
mean(mean_diff_sex) mean(mean_diff_foreign) mean(auc_sex) mean(auc_foreign)
condition
B 0.091543 0.264124 0.619131 0.619131
RPA 0.072296 0.263176 0.618202 0.619060
ROC -0.040102 0.058324 0.554310 0.554310
ACF 0.030862 0.067540 0.613583 0.615202

We'll conclude this tutorial by interpreting the results in the de-biasing experiment we just ran.

In the plot that we just made, we can note a few interesting things:

1. Removing the $s_{sex}$ protected attribute (RPA) decreases mean difference by roughly 2% points compared to baseline (B), mean auc are approximately the same between the two conditions.
2. There is no reduction in mean difference when removing the $s_{foreigner}$ variable (RPA) compared to baseline (B), highlighting the fact that the naive fairness-aware approach of removing sensitive attributes doesn't necessarily result in a fairer model.
3. The reject-option classification (ROC) model lead to a marked reduction in mean difference compared to baseline (~13% points for $s_{sex}$ and ~20% points for $s_{foreigner}$, meaning that the prediction made by these models reduce potential discrimination, but at the cost of about 5% points of auc.
4. Note that in the case of ROC, we get a negative mean difference with respect to $s_{sex}$, meaning that we're actually now slightly favoring women over men when predicting the beneficial low credit risk outcome.
5. In the additive counterfactually fair (ACF) model, we see a ~6% point reduction in mean difference with respect to $s_{sex}$ and a ~19% point reduction with respect to $s_{foreigner}$. However, unlike ROC, we maintain an auc of about 61%, even though we're making fairer predictions.

These observations highlight the fact that with certain methods like ROC, we see evidence of the fairness-utility tradeoff, but with others, like ACF, it's possible to produce a model that reduces potential discrimination in the predictions while preserving its utility with respect to some measure of predictive power (in this case, auc).

themis-ml is designed to be a flexible tool for measuring and reducing potential discrimination in the supervised learning setting for classification tasks in any arbitrary dataset. Future development will add support for fairness-aware regression estimators, as well as other cases such as multi-class classification and multi-valued protected class attributes.

You can read in your data as a pandas.DataFrame or numpy.array, and you should be able to use the Estimator and Scorer APIs as you just did with the German Credit dataset.

In this exercise, you looked at a fairly simplistic example of how one might de-bias a classifier, but clearly the real world is much more complicated, so if you'd like to contribute to this project, please feel free to submit issues in the github repo, and pull requests are welcome!

# References¶

1. Bantilan, Niels. "Themis-ml: A Fairness-aware Machine Learning Interface for End-to-end Discrimination Discovery and Mitigation." arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.06921 (2017).
2. Pedregosa, Fabian, et al. "Scikit-learn: Machine learning in Python." Journal of Machine Learning Research 12. Oct (2011): 2825-2830.
3. Zliobaite, Indre. "A survey on measuring indirect discrimination in machine learning." arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.00148 (2015).
4. Kamishima, Toshihiro, et al. "Fairness-aware classifier with prejudice remover regularizer." Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases (2012): 35-50.
5. F. Kamiran, A. Karim, and X. Zhang, “Decision theory for discrimination-aware classification,” in Data Mining (ICDM), 2012 IEEE 12th International
6. M. J. Kusner, J. R. Loftus, C. Russell, and R. Silva, “Counterfactual fairness,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.06856, 2017.