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Poster
A Pairwise Fair and Community-preserving Approach to k-Center Clustering
Brian Brubach · Darshan Chakrabarti · John P Dickerson · Samir Khuller · Aravind Srinivasan · Leonidas Tsepenekas

Thu Jul 16 06:00 AM -- 06:45 AM & Thu Jul 16 05:00 PM -- 05:45 PM (PDT) @
in Poster Session 41 »
Clustering is a foundational problem in machine learning with numerous applications. As machine learning increases in ubiquity as a backend for automated systems, concerns about fairness arise. Much of the current literature on fairness deals with discrimination against protected classes in supervised learning (group fairness). We define a different notion of fair clustering wherein the probability that two points (or a community of points) become separated is bounded by an increasing function of their pairwise distance (or community diameter). We capture the situation where data points represent people who gain some benefit from being clustered together. Unfairness arises when certain points are deterministically separated, either arbitrarily or by someone who intends to harm them as in the case of gerrymandering election districts. In response, we formally define two new types of fairness in the clustering setting, pairwise fairness and community preservation. To explore the practicality of our fairness goals, we devise an approach for extending existing $k$-center algorithms to satisfy these fairness constraints. Analysis of this approach proves that reasonable approximations can be achieved while maintaining fairness. In experiments, we compare the effectiveness of our approach to classical $k$-center algorithms/heuristics and explore the tradeoff between optimal clustering and fairness.
Keywords: Clustering · Unsupervised and Semi-supervised Learning · Fairness, Equity and Justice

Author Information

Brian Brubach (Wellesley College)
Darshan Chakrabarti (Carnegie Mellon University)
John P Dickerson (University of Maryland)
Samir Khuller (Northwestern University)
Aravind Srinivasan (Amazon)
Leonidas Tsepenekas (University of Maryland, College Park)

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