FedFMD: Fairness-Driven Adaptive Aggregation in Federated Learning via Mahalanobis Distance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Federated learning (FL) facilitates collaborative global model training without compromising data privacy. However, data distribution variations among clients inevitably introduce bias in global updates, impacting model fairness and performance. Existing methods assign client aggregation weights simply based on dataset size proportions or rely on substantial assumptions about specific global data distributions such as uniform label distributions. These approaches inadequately capture the intrinsic impact of Non-IID data characteristics on model divergence. To address these deficiencies, we propose a novel adaptive weight allocation algorithm, FedFMD, leveraging Mahalanobis distance, integrating Task Arithmetic, to dynamically assign weights based on client contributions. FedFMD explicitly models task-centric deviations caused by data heterogeneity without requiring raw data access or prior distribution assumptions. Besides, FedFMD enhances aggregation weights computation through time-decay adjustments, guided by historical client performance trends, optimizing both fairness and utility. Extensive evaluations against six state-of-the-art (SOTA) algorithms and two distance metrics across three datasets demonstrate the superior performance of FedFMD in fairness and utility.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".