Designing Fair Ranking Schemes

Items from a database are often ranked based on a combination of multiple criteria. A user may have the flexibility to accept combinations that weigh these criteria differently, within limits. On the other hand, this choice of weights can greatly affect the fairness of the produced ranking. In this paper, we develop a system that helps users choose criterion weights that lead to greater fairness. We consider ranking functions that compute the score of each item as a weighted sum of (numeric) attribute values, and then sort items on their score. Each ranking function can be expressed as a vector of weights, or as a point in a multi-dimensional space. For a broad range of fairness criteria, we show how to efficiently identify regions in this space that satisfy these criteria. Using this identification method, our system is able to tell users whether their proposed ranking function satisfies the desired fairness criteria and, if it does not, to suggest the smallest modification that does. We develop user-controllable approximation that and indexing techniques that are applied during preprocessing, and support sub-second response times during the online phase. Our extensive experiments on real datasets demonstrate that our methods are able to find solutions that satisfy fairness criteria effectively and efficiently

Fairness of Exposure in Rankings

Rankings are ubiquitous in the online world today. As we have transitioned from finding books in libraries to ranking products, jobs, job applicants, opinions and potential romantic partners, there is a substantial precedent that ranking systems have a responsibility not only to their users but also to the items being ranked. To address these often conflicting responsibilities, we propose a conceptual and computational framework that allows the formulation of fairness constraints on rankings in terms of exposure allocation. As part of this framework, we develop efficient algorithms for finding rankings that maximize the utility for the user while provably satisfying a specifiable notion of fairness. Since fairness goals can be application specific, we show how a broad range of fairness constraints can be implemented using our framework, including forms of demographic parity, disparate treatment, and disparate impact constraints. We illustrate the effect of these constraints by providing empirical results on two ranking problems.Comment: In Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, London, UK, 201

The intuitionistic fuzzy multi-criteria decision making based on inclusion degree

This paper introduces a new intuitionistic fuzzy multicriteria decision making method of evaluation based on degree of inclusion of two intuitionistic fuzzy sets. We have called the new technique TOPIIS (Technique to Order Preference by Inclusion of Ideal Solution). The technique is applied to develop an effective employee performance appraisal

Rewarding Carrots & Crippling Sticks: Eliciting Employee Preferences for the Optimal Incentive Mix in Europe

A ranking of a variety of incentive devices used by firms according to their perceived effectiveness by employees is identified. The determinants of employee incentive preferences are also investigated, suggesting a ‘menu’ of conditions under which an organization’s personnel policies will have maximum motivational impact on its workforce. Based on the beliefs of a unique sample of workers from seven European countries, the results suggest that (a) the primary determinant of the level of employee effort is the amount of discretion offered at work; (b) pay incentives and ‘gift exchanges’ are the most important motivators; (c) the use of monitoring and Taylor-type assembly lines are the least effective incentives; and (d) the optimal design of incentive strategies by firms is strongly shaped by a host of contextual factors. The expressed desire for autonomy, and distaste for control, by employees gives credibility to the “participative” management approach.Incentives, effectiveness, effort, attitudes, employees

High performance low-energy buildings

The era of legislation and creditable methods towards producing sustainable buildings is upon us. Yet, a major barrier to achieving environmental responsive design is in the lack of available information at the programming or pre-design phases of a project. The review and evaluation of climate as well as energy-efficient strategies could be difficult to consider at these preliminary stages. Until recently, introducing energy simulation tools at the design stage has been difficult and perhaps next to impossible at a pre-design or programming stage. However, analysis of this sort is essential to &lsquo;green building rating&rsquo; or performance assessment schemes such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environment Assessment Method). This paper discusses the implementation of a particular tool, ENERGY-10, where &lsquo;basecase&rsquo; building defaults are compared to a low-energy case which has applied multiple energy-efficient strategies automatically. An annual hour-by-hour simulation provides a daylighting calculation with a subsequent thermal evaluation. Calculation results provide energy consumption, peak load equipment sizing, a RANK feature of the energy-efficient strategies, reporting of CO2, SO2 and NOx reduction, optimum glazing type as well as excellent graphic output. Consideration is given as to the approach of how such information can be introduced into the building project brief enforcing a low-energyperformance target.<br /