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Fair consensus building combines the preferences of multiple rankers into a single consensus ranking, while ensuring any group defined by a protected attribute (such as race or gender) is not disadvantaged compared to other groups. Manually generating a fair consensus ranking is time-consuming and impractical- even for a fairly small number of candidates. While algorithmic approaches for auditing and generating fair consensus rankings have been developed, these have not been operationalized in interactive systems. To bridge this gap, we introduce FairFuse, a visualization system for generating, analyzing, and auditing fair consensus rankings. We construct a data model which includes base rankings entered by rankers, augmented with measures of group fairness, and algorithms for generating consensus rankings with varying degrees of fairness. We design novel visualizations that encode these measures in a parallel-coordinates style rank visualization, with interactions for generating and exploring fair consensus rankings. We describe use cases in which FairFuse supports a decision-maker in ranking scenarios in which fairness is important, and discuss emerging challenges for future efforts supporting fairness-oriented rank analysis. Code and demo videos available at https://osf.io/hd639/.
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MANI-RANK: Multi-attribute and Intersectional Fairness for Consensus Ranking
Combining the preferences of many rankers into one single consensus ranking is critical for consequential applications from hiring and admissions to lending. While group fairness has been extensively studied for classification, group fairness in rankings and in particular rank aggregation remains in its infancy. Recent work introduced the concept of fair rank aggregation for combining rankings but restricted to the case when candidates have a single binary protected attribute, i.e., they fall into two groups only. Yet it remains an open problem how to create a consensus ranking that represents the preferences of all rankers while ensuring fair treatment for candidates with multiple protected attributes such as gender, race, and nationality. In this work, we are the first to define and solve this open Multi-attribute Fair Consensus Ranking (MFCR) problem. As a foundation, we design novel group fairness criteria for rankings, called MANI-Rank, ensuring fair treatment of groups defined by individual protected attributes and their intersection. Leveraging the MANI-Rank criteria, we develop a series of algorithms that for the first time tackle the MFCR problem. Our experimental study with a rich variety of consensus scenarios demonstrates our MFCR methodology is the only approach to achieve both intersectional and protected attribute fairness while also representing the preferences expressed through many base rankings. Our real-world case study on merit scholarships illustrates the effectiveness of our MFCR methods to mitigate bias across multiple protected attributes and their intersections.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2007932
- PAR ID:
- 10338006
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
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