# Overcoming Representation Bias in Fairness-Aware data Repair using Optimal Transport

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02840 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02840/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [A Survey on Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09635/) (2019)
- [Certifying and removing disparate impact](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.3756/) (2014)
- [Inherent Trade-Offs in the Fair Determination of Risk Scores](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05807/) (2016)
- [Fairness Beyond Disparate Treatment & Disparate Impact: Learning Classification without Disparate Mistreatment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.08452/) (2016)
- [A comparative study of fairness-enhancing interventions in machine learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.04422/) (2018)
- [No Classification without Representation: Assessing Geodiversity Issues in Open Data Sets for the Developing World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08536/) (2017)
- [An Intersectional Definition of Fairness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.08362/) (2018)
- [Fair Regression with Wasserstein Barycenters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07286/) (2020)
- [Characterizing Intersectional Group Fairness with Worst-Case Comparisons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01673/) (2021)
- [Representation Bias in Data: A Survey on Identification and Resolution Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11852/) (2022)
- [Compatibility of Fairness Metrics with EU Non-Discrimination Laws: Demographic Parity & Conditional Demographic Disparity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08394/) (2023)
- [Optimal Transport for Fairness: Archival Data Repair using Small Research Data Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13864/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Optimal Transport for Efficient, Unsupervised Anomaly Detection on Industrial Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13940/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Optimal transport (OT) has an important role in transforming data distributions in a manner which engenders fairness. Typically, the OT operators are learnt from the unfair attribute-labelled data, and then used for their repair. Two significant limitations of this approach are as follows: (i) the OT operators for underrepresented subgroups are poorly learnt (i.e. they are susceptible to representation bias); and (ii) these OT repairs cannot be effected on identically distributed but out-of-sample (i.e. archival) data. In this paper, we address both of these problems by adopting a Bayesian nonparametric stopping rule for learning each attribute-labelled component of the data distribution. The induced OT-optimal quantization operators can then be used to repair the archival data. We formulate a novel definition of the fair distributional target, along with quantifiers that allow us to trade fairness against damage in the transformed data. These are used to reveal excellent performance of our representation-bias-tolerant scheme in simulated and benchmark data sets.