https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-12868-6
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Decorrelation using optimal transport
DPNC, University of Geneva Faculty of Science, Geneva, Switzerland
Received:
2
October
2023
Accepted:
29
April
2024
Published online:
6
June
2024
Being able to decorrelate a feature space from protected attributes is an area of active research and study in ethics, fairness, and also natural sciences. We introduce a novel decorrelation method using Convex Neural Optimal Transport Solvers (Cnots) that is able to decorrelate a continuous feature space against protected attributes with optimal transport. We demonstrate how well it performs in the context of jet classification in high energy physics, where classifier scores are desired to be decorrelated from the mass of a jet. The decorrelation achieved in binary classification approaches the levels achieved by the state-of-the-art using conditional normalising flows. When moving to multiclass outputs the optimal transport approach performs significantly better than the state-of-the-art, suggesting substantial gains at decorrelating multidimensional feature spaces.
© The Author(s) 2024
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Funded by SCOAP3.
