# Equity-Directed Bootstrapping: Examples and Analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.06624 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06624/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Aug 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [Equality of Opportunity in Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02413/) (2016)
- [A Survey on Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09635/) (2019)
- [Inherent Tradeoffs in Learning Fair Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08386/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

When faced with severely imbalanced binary classification problems, we often train models on bootstrapped data in which the number of instances of each class occur in a more favorable ratio, e.g., one. We view algorithmic inequity through the lens of imbalanced classification: in order to balance the performance of a classifier across groups, we can bootstrap to achieve training sets that are balanced with respect to both labels and group identity. For an example problem with severe class imbalance---prediction of suicide death from administrative patient records---we illustrate how an equity-directed bootstrap can bring test set sensitivities and specificities much closer to satisfying the equal odds criterion. In the context of na"ive Bayes and logistic regression, we analyze the equity-directed bootstrap, demonstrating that it works by bringing odds ratios close to one, and linking it to methods involving intercept adjustment, thresholding, and weighting.