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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Controlling Directions Orthogonal to a Classifier

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

We propose to identify directions invariant to a given classifier so that these directions can be controlled in tasks such as style transfer. While orthogonal decomposition is directly identifiable when the given classifier is linear, we formally define a notion of orthogonality in the non-linear case. We also provide a surprisingly simple method for constructing the orthogonal classifier (a classifier utilizing directions other than those of the given classifier). Empirically, we present three use cases where controlling orthogonal variation is important: style transfer, domain adaptation, and fairness. The orthogonal classifier enables desired style transfer when domains vary in multiple aspects, improves domain adaptation with label shifts and mitigates the unfairness as a predictor.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master
Department dc:contributor.department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Grantor dc:publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year dc:date.issued
2022

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Xu, Yilun
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Jaakkola, Tommi

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
  • Copyright MIT

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/147480
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/147480

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
MIT
Base URL
dspace.mit.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
related terms
citation

Xu, Yilun. Controlling Directions Orthogonal to a Classifier. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2022. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/147480