A hierarchical decomposition for explaining ML performance discrepancies

Machine learning (ML) algorithms can often differ in performance across domains. Understanding *why* their performance differs is crucial for determining what types of interventions (e.g., algorithmic or operational) are most effective at closing the performance gaps. *Aggregate decompositions* express the total performance gap as the gap due to a shift in the feature distribution $p(X)$ plus the gap due to a shift in the outcome's conditional distribution $p(Y|X)$. While this coarse explanation is helpful for guiding root cause analyses, it provides limited details and can only suggest coarse fixes involving **all variables** in an ML system. *Detailed decompositions* quantify the importance of **each variable** to each term in the aggregate decomposition, which can provide a deeper understanding and suggest more targeted interventions. Although parametric methods exist for conducting a full hierarchical decomposition of an algorithm's performance gap at the aggregate and detailed levels, current nonparametric methods only cover parts of the hierarchy; many also require knowledge of the entire causal graph. We introduce a nonparametric hierarchical framework for explaining why the performance of an ML algorithm differs across domains, without requiring causal knowledge. Furthermore, we derive debiased, computationally-efficient estimators and statistical inference procedures to construct confidence intervals for the explanations.