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ICSE 2021
Mon 17 May - Sat 5 June 2021

Machine learning software can be unfair when making human-related decisions, having prejudices over certain groups of people. Existing work primarily focuses on proposing fairness metrics and presenting fairness improvement approaches. It remains unclear how key aspect of any machine learning system, such as the feature set and training data, affect fairness. This paper presents results from a comprehensive study that addresses this problem. We find that extending the feature set plays a significant role in improving fairness (with an average increase rate of 38%). Importantly, and contrary to widely-held beliefs that greater fairness often corresponds to lower accuracy, our findings reveal that extending the feature set improves both accuracy and fairness. Perhaps also surprisingly, we find that extending training data does not improve fairness. Our results suggest such data enhancement can further reduce fairness when feature sets are insufficient; an important cautionary finding for practising software engineers.

Thu 27 May

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

10:00 - 10:55
3.1.1. Social Equality and Fairness #2Journal-First Papers / SEIS - Software Engineering in Society / Technical Track at Blended Sessions Room 1 +12h
Chair(s): Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology
10:00
15m
Paper
A First Look at Human Values-Violation in App ReviewsSEIS
SEIS - Software Engineering in Society
Humphrey Obie Monash University, Waqar Hussain Monash University, Xin Xia Huawei Software Engineering Application Technology Lab, John Grundy Monash University, Li Li Monash University, Burak Turhan Monash University, Jon Whittle CSIRO's Data61 and Monash University, Mojtaba Shahin Monash University
Pre-print Media Attached
10:15
20m
Full-paper
"Ignorance and Prejudice" in Software FairnessTechnical Track
Technical Track
Jie M. Zhang UCL, Mark Harman University College London
Pre-print Media Attached
10:35
20m
Paper
Gender Differences in Personality Traits of Software EngineersJournal-First
Journal-First Papers
Daniel Russo Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Klaas-Jan Stol University College Cork and Lero, Ireland
Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached
22:00 - 22:55
22:00
15m
Paper
A First Look at Human Values-Violation in App ReviewsSEIS
SEIS - Software Engineering in Society
Humphrey Obie Monash University, Waqar Hussain Monash University, Xin Xia Huawei Software Engineering Application Technology Lab, John Grundy Monash University, Li Li Monash University, Burak Turhan Monash University, Jon Whittle CSIRO's Data61 and Monash University, Mojtaba Shahin Monash University
Pre-print Media Attached
22:15
20m
Full-paper
"Ignorance and Prejudice" in Software FairnessTechnical Track
Technical Track
Jie M. Zhang UCL, Mark Harman University College London
Pre-print Media Attached
22:35
20m
Paper
Gender Differences in Personality Traits of Software EngineersJournal-First
Journal-First Papers
Daniel Russo Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Klaas-Jan Stol University College Cork and Lero, Ireland
Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached